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.
At least one conservative probably had a literal aneurism when they heard this.
Wouldn’t they be glad undocumented immigrants would be more likely to live in California and less likely to live in their state?
There’s conservatives in California too. Just not enough to win most of their major elections.
This headline is some absolute bullshit.
California already had health insurance for undocumented immigrants, as does Massachusetts. It’s just limited to emergency care and pregnancy care.
California is expanding their existing coverage to comprehensive health care including primary care, which is cheaper than letting medical conditions get so completely out of control that they require expensive and disabling emergency hospitalizations.
I mean, it’s also just nice to keep people healthy as well. Medical care should not cost a thing.
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.
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.
I got a better idea. Why don’t we just have universal healthcare already and pay for it by raising taxes?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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, 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.
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.
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.
You can get subsidized insurance through https://coveredca.com/ or free Medi-cal.
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.
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.
Didn’t California recently also pass a Public Option for healthcare, aiming for full coverage of Californians in general?
Great steps in the right direction.
No, CA does not have a public option… unless you consider things like Medicaid.
That said, many are pushing for single payer, and in October Newsom signed a bill that tries to resurrect the push for single payer.
I mean, this amounts to that, since by definition, an undocumented immigrant has no documentation. So anyone in California now has access (assuming they didn’t already, I don’t know) to the state insurance plan by claiming to be an undocumented immigrant when they go to the doctor.
Great step for what? Mental healthcare in the state is horrible. Can’t care for its own citizens but here we are.
Speaking with some authority here as I am guardian of a mentally ill family member. California vs Texas both are equally shitty when it comes to dealing with crazy. Housing is part of the major problem and no one dare fucking tackle that.
Fuck Newsome soundbite cowboy ways.
Must be very recent because I was without insurance due to cost back when I lived in california just a few months ago. Moved to china for obvious reasons
Do you just repeat CIA propaganda without giving it any second thought? It’s actually a nice place to live.
For us non-US readers; what’s the difference between health insurance and healthcare? For comparison, in Australia private health gives you a room, nice TV, edible food etc but you don’t get priority. When it comes to essential surgery or treatment you join the line with everyone else.
Health insurance is the system we use to pay for healthcare. Insurance is made available by your employer, you then pay premiums in order to buy and keep your insurance, and once you actually need healthcare, your insurance helps cover some of the costs of receiving care.
Everyone in the states needs health insurance, not because of how affordable it makes taking care of emergencies, but because, if you don’t have insurance, you have to pay the prices that the medical provider and insurance companies made up on how much procedures cost, so they can give each other a discount on those insane prices.
For instance, if you have insurance in the states and you go to the hospital for a nasty fall that maybe broke something. Nothing was broken, but they had to take x-rays. Well, you have to pay for the x-rays, and the time that the staff was needed for you. We’re going to pretend, for this case, that your insurance won’t deny coverage since it “wasn’t medically necessary”. So you’d get a bill between $200-$300.
But if you didn’t have insurance, or were denied coverage, you have to pay full price. But that price isn’t the price that anyone actually pays unless they’re in your predicament. You see, the provider and insurance had gotten together to determine how much would be paid for any given procedure, but they make the deal seem much better to their respective bosses by inflating the price of the procedure before negotiations, so that the insurance pays a “discount” that’s similar to the actual cost of the procedure. Which is great for them, but if you get treatment without insurance (or your insurance denies coverage) you have to pay the fake, inflated price that the provider said it cost before they negotiated the price back down to something reasonable with the insurance companies. So, to go back to my example above, those x-rays and some time with staff that didn’t lead anywhere will probably cost you more in the neighborhood of $2000-$3000 if you aren’t covered.
This has a double cooling effect. One, it forces more people to have health insurance out of fear of paying those stupidly insane prices. And two, it makes people avoid going to the doctor for minor issues for fear of being denied coverage since “it wasn’t medically necessary”. Great for profitability, terrible for humans.
Let’s not forget that the premium is usually taken from your paycheck, and can range from $15-$750/pay cycle depending on the insurance plan. In my case, I’m paying $450/month as the premium, plus $90/visit. The healthcare system doesn’t have an office near my home, so I travel an hour and a half to see the doctor, and it’s 45 minutes to the nearest hospital.
For reference, I was in a car accident that broke both of my wrists and I had to go to the ER. I was fine other than my wrists.
The ER use for about… 3 hours? Was over $10,000. Because my health insurance refused coverage since it was in an auto accident.
Luckily my bodily injury coverage on my insurance paid.
Then I needed surgery and physical therapy. All of which were not covered by my health insurance.
The surgery was about $32,000. (Included the metal plates and screws/pins as well as the surgical room and recovery + surgeon and anesthesia).
All said and done total cost for having my wrists broken was about $70,000. None of which was covered by my health insurance and thank god my parents (I was still on their car insurance) paid for underinsured motorist coverage because the drunk that caused the accident didn’t have insurance. I didn’t go into debt ONLY because of that coverage.
They charged me $40 for 2 Tylenol they gave me in the ER while I waited for them to come set my wrists and give me the big girl pain killers. $18 for a pregnancy test too prior to surgery that I couldn’t refuse. Unreal.
The crazy thing is that now, with high deductible plans being the norm, having access to your insurer’s PRICES is now a significant part of the benefit.
For any not familiar with high deductible plans, essentially you pay the full cost of the first several thousand dollars you incur per year, before insurance starts to cover any of your costs. But you get to pay the insurance company’s rates instead of the fake retail price.
Emergency rooms are required to try and stabilize patients before they discharge them. These patients are billed after they leave the hospital, insured or not.
If I try to schedule a checkup or procedure, I need to give my insurance card first. Uninsured can pay for a flat fee upfront. If they can’t pay, they get no service.
With insurance, things get complicated. The facility will try to give you an estimated cost of the service. But it’s always a back and forth with 2 or 3 parties; the insurance, facility, and doctor network. If there is a disagreement between parties, you the patient get a bigger bill. Even when you payed for the procedure beforehand.
It’s even more fun when, for example, a scan is covered but the person reading the results is not. Or a surgeon and surgery is covered, but the anesthesiologist is not. Or your usual ob/gyn isn’t working when you go into labor at 2am on a Sunday.
Yea, I fucking hate bill balancing. We received a $10,000 bill for a neonatal consult a day after my son was born. He had a little fluid in his lungs, was gone in an hour or two.
The doctor was part of the hospital system but I guess that 2 miles he drove to the women’s center justifies a $10k bill. Our healthcare is broken.
