12mo ago

California becomes first state to offer health insurance to all undocumented immigrants

abcnews.go.com California becomes first state to offer health insurance to all undocumented immigrants

On Jan. 1, California will become the first state to offer health insurance to all undocumented adults by expanding access to the state-run insurance plan, Medi-Cal.

About 700,000 adults between ages 26 and 49 will be eligible as of Jan. 1

California will welcome the new year by becoming the first state to offer health insurance for all undocumented immigrants.

Starting Jan. 1, all undocumented immigrants, regardless of age, will qualify for Medi-Cal, California's version of the federal Medicaid program for people with low incomes.

Previously, undocumented immigrants were not qualified to receive comprehensive health insurance but were allowed to receive emergency and pregnancy-related services under Medi-Cal as long as they met eligibility requirements, including income limits and California residency in 2014.

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I'm going to say it and I consider myself very liberal. But why are we providing insurance for them when we're not even covering our own citizens?? How does this benefit the people who live in California and contribute to its GDP in a significant way? And I'm not saying undocumented immigrants don't contribute to the gdP but they are undocumented. Everything happens under the table if they are. I would much rather California work on universal healthcare system for their state that includes immigrants. And I'm definitely not saying just because they're undocumented doesn't mean they don't deserve this. But where is the benefit? These people can't vote. They're not paying taxes. Yet they're reaping rewards of other people who do. Why doesn't California put this money towards its massive homeless problem or it's massive drug problem or it's massive crime problem? I just simply do not understand why they would make something like this a priority over so many other problem ?
And before y'all eat me alive.I am genuinely asking because I don't understand why this is something they feel is important? There are so many other issues plaguing their state alone. Why do they feel this is a priority when we're not even taking care of our own citizens? Please only respond if you can genuinely give me insightful information or an education on this. Because like i said i consider myself very liberal and in other context I'd think this is great. But we are facing some many challenges just among our own documented citizens that i just feel like this is a great step but not the step we should be taking.
- One small point: Undocumented immigrants absolutely do pay taxes. They pay sales taxes, gas taxes, and contribute billions annually in income taxes. It may be true that not all of them pay income taxes, but many of them do.
  And not for nothin, but there are plenty of citizens who pay little or no taxes too. And if you're worried about people not paying their fair share of taxes, it's weird to focus on such an underprivileged group when our corporations and billionaires are almost the whole fuckin pie chart. It's not even close.
- "we're not even covering our own citizens"
  "We" already are. If by "we" you mean Californians.
  Also what's the alternative here? ER's can't deny help based on insurance. So if an immigrant goes to the hospital, should the hospital foot the bill or should that be covered by the state?
  Bringing homelessness, crime, and drugs into this is a false dichotomy. Those are separate issues. But hey if people aren't going broke from getting sick maybe homelessness, crime, and drug use may go down. If you're trying to fix those issues then health care should be top of your list anyway.
  And like other comments have stated, they DO pay taxes.
  And all that being said, when I need to go to the dentist, I go to Mexico because it's cheaper even with health insurance here.
  
  I've got a wacky idea. What if we took the $4 billion annually that we're spending to cover noncitizens, and we instead put that money into covering MORE citizens? Raise the cutoff for citizens so that more of them benefit.
  
  I've got a wacky idea. What if we treated people as people and didn't discriminate based on where they happened to be born? Especially in this case where we're talking about people who live in the state, report their income, and pay taxes contributing to everyone's state funded healthcare.
  
  I guess the essence of the problem is should people who sneak into the country (including using anchor babies) be treated as good or better than those who were born here or came here legitimately?
  
  Other countries don't do that. Of course other countries don't have ridiculous costs for healthcare but when I moved to Germany I was required to get private health insurance as a legal resident. If you're injured in practically any other country (unless you're an asylum resident) you don't receive government assist benefits at all for anything.
  Government benefits should be for citizens first and foremost. Everyone else shouldn't be ignored but they should come second
  
  What does "come second" mean? Like they wait in a longer line? They get worse doctors?
  And just because other countries don't help immigrants is hardly an argument that they shouldn't be helped. WHY shouldn't they get health care?
  
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as you know you only need to have a health insurance. No one forces you to pick a certain one, public of private.
  
  No. If you become a resident when you're over 30 you're required to get private health insurance.
  
  Ah, thanks. I remember reading something that public ones won't accept you when you're too old.
  
  The funny thing is you get quicker care if you have private. A lot of Europeans don't realize they're closer to American style healthcare than they care to admit.
  They really take it for granted
  
  California: About 40 million people.
  4 billion/40 million= 100.
  $100 dollars extra per person OR health coverage for literally every person in California regardless of their status.
  
  You can't even get a bandaid from a nurse for that. Pretty sure the hospital tried to charge me around that price because some admin stuck his head in a few hours after my youngest child was born and asked us if we were doing fine. Wellness check.
  
  I got a better idea. Why don't we just have universal healthcare already and pay for it by raising taxes?
  
  Why raise taxes? Universal Healthcare would cost less than 2/3 of what we currently spend anyway. We could lower taxes and implement it.
  
  You mean expand coverage to those who can afford it just because they're citizens?
  That's not the purpose of the program.
  
  Preventative care is ENORMOUSLY cheaper than emergency care. Hospitals have a mandate to provide life saving care to anyone regardless of insurance or documentation status. When they don't have health insurance, they wait until it's an emergency and either destabilize the hospital system or raise premiums for everyone.
  This is another example where "it's just cheaper to pay for it". It's also another position that so called conservatives are against, even though it's far more fiscally conservative to support. Guess y'all can't get past that crab mentality.
- California is trying to set up a single payer healthcare system. This is not a case of California calling it quits and not bothering to try to cover everyone.
  
  Maybe since MNsure passed this year, California has a model to build off of for the next legislative session. It could certainly use improvements; I'll be watching California and NY, since MNsure has a ton of room for improvement
- Are you a California voter? If you are, youre asking a very good question. If you’re not, well, there’s no we involved, this is a state funded program, and the state of California actually pays more in to the federal government than it receives from it, so it can prop up freeloading red states, primarily the south. So, as a non Californian, not my circus, not my monkeys.
  All of that said, I agree with you, American citizens should benefit from American tax dollars before anyone else.
  
  The correct thing to do is, California should expand Medicaid coverage for Texans. Obviously.
  
  I actually like this idea. No better way to stick it to Texans than to insure the hell out of them and show them how shitty their state is.
  
  Establish a private company called California Funded.
  Develop high-speed affordable light rail connecting Houston, Austin, DFW, Waco, and San Antonio.
  
  Up until very recently, Californians were becoming Texans at a quick pace.
  Then many of them realized that it’s hot, conservative, deceptively expensive, has no legal weed, no abortion, and no hope for change in the near future. The grass is always greener on the other side I guess. I have respect for those who knew what they were getting into and chose to stay to help us fight the good fight, but I have to laugh a little at the ones who didn’t seem to realize that we live up to our reputation down here.
- I think it's because it's ultimately cheaper to cover them than to let them go to the emergency room and have to pay exorbitant prices on the back end. That's a guess though.
- Immigrants are part of any economy that flourishes. Always has been. Egypt, Rome, France, England all had a high population of immigration. It's to be expected with the world's six largest economy (even bigger than Russia's) there is a need for those doing these sorts of jobs to be taken care of.
  As others have pointed out, they do pay taxes. They do live here. Health care should be a human right. Not a bargaining chip. The fact that universal health care isn't even considered an option for the US is ridiculous.
- What makes you think Medi-Cal isn't available for California citizens?
  
  Experience. It's very easy to lose medi-cal for making still not enough to afford rent.
  
  The Medicaid income limit that you're referring to will apply to the undocumented immigrants too.
  It's not like they're expanding Medi-Cal to be available to "citizens within the income limit and any undocumented immigrant regardless of financial eligibility"
  
  Well sure, but when the undocumented are working for cash, how the fuck are they supposed to enforce that?
  
  The benefits cliff is real and it sucks. I think Covered California does a pretty good job bridging the healthcare gap at least. Housing and nutrition assistance, not so much.
  
  Well, renting is one of the biggest scams the working class has fallen for.
  I don't think not being able to afford rent is a reason to withhold healthcare from those who need it.
  Instead, it should be a reason to take action to reduce the amount you're paying for rent.
  Unfortunately, that doesn't make rich people richer or fulfill your entitlement to live wherever you want so I don't think useful idiots will be proud of it.
- California has a huge labor shortage. It is extraordinarily expensive to live near any major population center. Agriculture is a huge industry, but many service, hospitality industries, etc. still need and require people living near big areas where the average housing price is 500k+ (this is including 1-2 commute to achieve that price excluding our high gasoline costs)
  Who the fuck can sustainably work at or near minimum wage with those costs, paying full taxes.
  This is an attempt at a labor policy that keeps all tech people happy they get can go out to dinner on Tuesday night.
  
  I think you are the only one who even got close to answering my question. Without just straight up attacking one point i made and then ignoring everything else i said.
  This makes sense. And with how our gov revolves around work and corporate greed it would make even more then that California gov is trying to bolster its "low earners" economy.
  
  Because a healthier population is a more able-working population. Great perspective
  
  In Canada we have similar issues in they want to bring in immigrants (many on student visas) by 100s of thousands which in turn sees them blamed for the housing affordability crisis when they really are brought in to help prop up not only the universities with higher enrollment fees but also to prop up employers that want workers at minimum or lower wages. It's an added bonus that they need to rent rooms from politician landlords.
  There's definitely an issue with the impending shortage of younger population to support the aging population which is also why they're bringing immigrants in for, but it's also maintaining artificially low wages that normal market conditions would not ever see filled unless wages were increased.
  In the meantime like in the US there is this low wage economic class of non citizens abused for cheap labor.
  
  Have the tried building more housing?
  
  Where? We don't own 2/3 of the land in the state. The Federal Government does, and we can't build there. We've built as much as we can, given maximum height restrictions, and used up basically all available land already.
  
  I lived in the Bay area and travel to California often for work. You are just wrong. First off there is plenty of room, secondly you people build single detached homes when you should be building subways with apartment buildings. Sure the fed owns a lot of your land but who cares? It isn't in San Jose it is out in the freaken desert. Also freaken combine like things. It is so absurd how you randomly see fortune 100 companies next to houses.
  Basically fly to the better coast and walk around Brooklyn. Take some pictures. Then show the people back home what you should be doing. This isn't rocket science.
  
  We have to change the laws to be able to build like that. You aren't allowed to build taller than a certain height west of the 5. State and local maximum building heights do not allow us to build multiple use structures.
  Sure there may be "plenty of room," but it's all owned, and zoned for single use structures. Believe me, I'm fighting to change that shit at the local level, but currently I couldn't replace my house with a brownstone because it will never get permitted, as in the permits needed for construction.
  Also the fed owns land in the cities as well as the deserts, mountains, and forests.
  
  So you admit that this is a human caused problem
- You can get subsidized insurance through https://coveredca.com/ or free Medi-cal.
- The answer to your question is this; do the math. It turns out that it's less expensive to cover everyone than it is to rely on a system wherein illegals can only access healthcare at the ER.
  It really is as simple as that.
- You're so close. It's true. Why give them when we don't have it covered for ourselves.
  You hint on a lot of other issues too, like homelessness and drug programs.
  I'll say this, we do not have an issue with funding. For example we can look at other countries that do have proper funding for these programs and their gdp is nowhere near what the US generates. And yet we struggle!?
  We have problems that we can't solve alone but we are indoctrinated into thinking that we can.
  We don't need to throw this money away, but we do. Somebody will get paid a boat load of money and some poor immigrant will receive substandard healthcare. All this is working as intended and someone in 50 years will ask the same question.
- We take in ~$12 billion in taxes a year from undocumented immigrants. From people who will likely never receive benefits like social security or Medicare.
- Having a large group of people living in your society without healthcare is just asking for huge (expensive) trouble. And it's not like it's more than the documented Californian's have access to. In addition, Medi-Cal gives access to mental health and drug abuse counseling and help. California is really nice. There's a reason so freaking many people have moved here (although I was pleasantly surprised to see more moved out last year! Hope that trend continues). The cost of housing has gone crazy (for a long while now), which studies have shown has a direct correlation with homelessness. Don't let the propaganda get to you. California, like just about every state (and really just about every country I've ever been to), has mostly pleasant, friendly people and livable areas. And sure, some really, really shitty areas. Several obvious problems, and pretty straightforward ways to solve a lot of them, but politics and politicians just can't handle big, long-impact decisions these days.
- Yeah, I'm curious how it helps them politically too. Don't get me wrong, it seems like a good thing to do, morally, but I can only see negatives politically. Could be an attempt to save money on ER, but I'm not sure if it's the state that picks up that tab. Could be an attempt to keep their working population healthier, saving money on productivity. Could've been lobbied for by the healthcare industry to reduce their costs, or industries that employ undocumented workers to make them more productive. Could be to secure the votes of citizens with undocumented parents/relatives.
  I'm not a Californian, but it seems like a lot of the Democratic politicians there are grifters, and only care about themselves, getting re-elected, and climbing the political ladder; especially Newsom. So, I suppose they think this benefits them in some way, but I'm not sure how.
  
  Don't worry, everyone just responded about how I was wrong that they don't really pay taxes. And instead completely missed the point of what I was asking even though i made it clear lol. I think most people in government are self-serving now on either side. Well, the reality is actually they're not self-serving theyre company serving. It seems like in today's society government officials are beholden to large companies over the people.

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