California proposal to expand illegal immigrant health coverage
California is poised on the brink of expanding Medi-Cal (the state Medicaid program) to cover illegal immigrants 19-26. When I read that, my first thought was aren’t they already covered in California?
It turns out that previously they only had been covered to the age of 19, and this new move would place Medi-Cal coverage in compliance with the ages of Obamacare coverage, which goes to 26.
When Goveror Newsom was inaugurated back in January, he proposed the change:
California already covers undocumented children until they turn 19, with Newsom’s plan increasing the age cut-off to mirror that of the Affordable Care Act, which allows young adults to stay on a parent’s health insurance plan until turning 26.
“It’s the right thing to do,” Newsom said in a Facebook Live feed announcing the proposal. “It’s the fiscally conservative thing to do. It’s the moral thing to do … When we talk about universal healthcare, it means everybody. When everybody pulls together, it means lower costs to each and every one of you.”
If you’re somewhat puzzled by the “fiscally conservative” statement of Newsom’s, you wouldn’t be alone. The idea is to pay for this through the following:
A legislative proposal last year pegged the cost of extending Medi-Cal to undocumented immigrants under 26 at $250 million a year. That cost would fall solely to California, despite the mix of federal and state money that typically comprises Medi-Cal funding because the Affordable Care Act prohibits the use of federal dollars for covering immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally.
So although Medi-Cal in general is partly federally-funded, this proposal would not be.
More:
Newsom’s proposal would also create an individual mandate in California to thwart predicted drops in the state’s health insurance market after the federal government removed financial penalties for uninsured consumers beginning this year. The requirement that consumers have health insurance or face financial penalties propped up the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, and its elimination is expected to drive up premiums.
Without the individual mandate, all consumers will experience rate increases this year, said officials for Covered California, the state’s official health insurance marketplace. Covered California Executive Director Peter Lee said Newsom’s proposal would bring stability to the market and is a critical step toward reaching universal healthcare.
Newsom’s plan to create a individual mandate for Californians could be a heavy lift, even in the Democrat-dominated state Legislature, where such a requirement could require a two-thirds vote.
That was back in January, but now the proposal is before the legislature, tasked with approving a budget by June 15:
Republicans on the legislative committee negotiating the budget voted against the proposal, arguing it was not fair to give health benefits to people who are in the country illegally while taxing people who are here legally for not purchasing health insurance.
Republicans in California are essentially powerless, however.
There are plenty of Democrats in California who won’t stop at having Medi-Cal cover illegal immigrants up to the age of 26, however, and are eager to cover all of them throughout life. I will add that Medi-Cal only covers very low-income people, so (assuming that illegal immigrants would be disproportionately represented in the low-income Medi-Cal eligible group), this could and probably will stick in the craws of legal residents and citizens who are above the poverty level, are struggling to make ends meet, must provide their own health insurance or remain uncovered, and also be taxed and/or penalized to support illegal immigrants who are poorer than they.
The reality, however, is that California can do what California wants to do. There is nothing to stop it. And there is nothing to stop plenty more illegal immigrants from flocking there for the free ride on health care. There is also nothing to stop more middle-income (or higher) people from fleeing the state, although California still has its natural beauty and climate to attract others.
Another reality is that in California and across the nation, taxpayers are already paying for the health care of illegal immigrants through requirements that they be treated in emergency rooms. I believe that may be the origins of Newsom’s otherwise puzzling “It’s the fiscally conservative thing to do” statement. The argument goes something like this: because it is mandated that we cover people who go to the emergency room and cannot pay, illegal immigrants are using that service both for emergencies and for health care that would ordinary take place in a doctor’s office. They also lack preventive care. The “fiscally conservative” argument is that providing regular health coverage for them would actually reduce costs because it would prevent illness through making preventive care more available, and it would also reduce emergency room visits which tend to be far more expensive than regular doctor visits.
I have no idea whether the above argument would pan out in California if this measure were to pass, but my guess is that it wouldn’t reduce emergency room visits as much as thought, or prevent illness as much as hoped, and that it would be more expensive than projected—as well as drawing more and more illegal immigrants to the state.
[NOTE: I’ve previously written here about Medi-Cal policy in covering illegal immigrants, and emergency room coverage in general.]
In California, citizens who cannot afford health insurance will pay for illegals to have health insurance via their taxes.
In California, homeless veterans (citizens) will not have health insurance, but illegals will have free health insurance.
And very soon the age limit on illegals will be lifted to however long they live. The socialist creep will continue, as in the frog being slowly boiled alive in a warming pot.
I really think that some on the Left–maybe a lot more than just “some”–live in a fantasy world.
How can the California governor*, those advising him, and those who would pass this legislation not realize that, placing a tax on citizens because they do not sign up for California’s version of Obamacare in order to pay for the health care of illegal aliens/non-citizens will have two very foreseeable and predictable effects–it will attract more and more illegal aliens to California, and it will drive more and more taxpaying citizens out of California?
The more likely irresponsible streaming into the state, the more responsible streaming out?
How the hell can this be, in any way, “good” for California?
Or, is the whole idea to destroy California as a functioning state?
But, if so, why?
What is to be gained?
* Saw a snippet of what was apparently Newsome’s victory speech, in which Newsome, with his young son? in his arms, smilingly (he looked kinda spaced out, with this dopey, dreamy look on his face) delivered a whole ton of platitudes, and talked of the California he wanted to create as some kind of Utopia; a place where all–high and low, taxpayer, and illegal alien–would be welcomed.
No mention, though, of how this Utopia would be paid for (other than apparently sheering the “sheep” in California, i.e. taxpayers, even more closely and frequently).
If I remember correctly Vermont’s attempt at single payer actually increased emergency room visits by 20%.
The socialist creep will continue, as in the frog being slowly boiled alive in a warming pot.
Edward: However, some of the frogs (moi!) are jumping out of the pot.
I laugh at those who claim healthcare is a right and they want to make it available to all. EMTALA (Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act), passed in 1984, has already done that. And illegals have been getting health care as a result of it since 1984. Ever been to an emergency room? The ones in the Puget Sound are full of the homeless and illegals. They get the care, those with insurance pay for it. EMTALA. No one talks about it, but IMHO, it has screwed up our medical reimbursement and care system almost beyond repair. Hah, California will pick up the tab for the Dreamers. Instead of the health insurance policy owners paying the tab, it will be the taxpayers. Same people, just a different way of getting the money.
Get rid of EMTALA, set up low-cost/charitable store front clinics for the poor, allow insurance to be sold across state lines, reform our medical tort laws, set up high risk pools for those with pre-existing conditions, designate hospitals to do charity work (raise the money through charitable donations), and create price transparency. Those steps might get our system back on track. Otherwise we are looking at the progs dream of “Medicare For All,” which would quickly become akin to Britain’s NHS. Please God, deliver us from that evil.
“Otherwise we are looking at the progs dream of “Medicare For All,” which would quickly become akin to Britain’s NHS. Please God, deliver us from that evil.” J.J.
As Venezuela, Cuba and N. Korea demonstrate, God will not deliver a society from the consequences of what they insist upon embracing. Those citizens who reject cultural suicide have to decide, before its too late… that the Constitution is not a suicide pact.
And that, those who demonstrate through their actions that they believe the constitution to be a suicide pact have in fact forfeited their claim to the citizenship to which constitutional provisions apply.
Brazen, bald-faced lies.
” When everybody pulls together, it means lower costs to each and every one of you.”
“It’s the fiscally conservative thing to do. It’s the moral thing to do.”
It’s all vomitus, which he claims is a fine meal instead.
@neo:So although Medi-Cal in general is partly federally-funded, this proposal would not be.
Money is fungible. The not-federally-funded dodge has been used a lot, notable with the Hyde Amendment forbidding Federal funds for abortions under Medicaid. See also lotteries-pay-for-education, gas-taxes-pay-for-roads, alumni-pay-for-football.
Every dime California spends on illegal immigrants came from a US taxpayer.
When I was an academic, we had a fancy duplicator, but using that came out of our budget. So we hired work-study students to do the work manually at three times the cost, but came of the work study budget, not the department budget.
However, it was the same taxpayer footing both bills….
When California and the other fiscally insane states collapse they will predictably scream for a bailout and if rescued will return to the same suicidal actions.
A national bailout should hinge upon loss of citizenship for every governor and legislative representative who voted for this insanity.
Consequences… without them nothing changes.
Absent real consequences, America will at some point, fall into chaos and a dictator will arise. Circumstance will then reveal if it’s to be a Stalin or a Cromwell.
When a State goes bankrupt and then seeks a bailout, it should revert to territorial status.
J.J & Parker 2020.
Geoffrey for Secretary of DOJ.
@parker:When a State goes bankrupt and then seeks a bailout, it should revert to territorial status.
No precedent in our legal system but there is in one close to our legal tradition.
“… my first thought was aren’t they [illegals 19-26] already covered in California?”
During Obama’s 2nd term, some IG investigated whether illegals were actually being banned from Obamacare or Covered California, or if it was just an ignored element of the statutes. I’ve forgotten if the test was only on Covered Cal. or across the nation. The test sample size was small, perhaps 20 or 30. But they discovered that 9 out of 10 hypothetical illegals were successful in obtaining Covered Cal.
Furthermore, the out-of-pocket cost of the Covered Cal. bronze plan, for married couples with an income of $68K (approx.) or less is $2/month. Yes, two dollars. Of course, the deductibles are very high. No, no; it is notfree health insurance, the lefties will tell you.
_____
I believe everywhere where it has been measured, emergency room usage has increased after a large expansion of health insurance coverage to include a large heretofore uncovered lower income group. I’m sure everyone who makes this argument nowadays knows this. But it is a logical sounding argument, so they make it anyway, the facts be damned.
Why does emergency room usage go up? I have seen articles that attempt to explain, that I don’t remember well, so I won’t attempt to butcher the topic.
Republicans in California are essentially powerless, however.
No. They are not. They can LEAVE.
They ARE stupid though, since they are still there.
:^D
I left. I spent 25 years operating on illegals. I ran a trauma center for 7 of those years EMTALA came out of a case of a single woman who was transferred in Texas to another hospital and lost the baby. That is how laws are created. Just as Bush sent US troops to Somalia because of TV programs (probably CNN) showing “starving” Somalis.
The country is slowly going nuts. All this will do is dilute the reimbursement to physicians and hospitals and MediCal will see willing providers shrink more.
Mike K, Thanks for the input.
However, I think it was Bill Clinton and Sec. Def. Les Aspin that sent our troops to Somalia. Then Aspin was too cheap to provide APC vehicles in the event that rescues were necessary.
Yes, it’s great to have you here, Dr. Mike!
Frederick,
I was thinking of Newfoundland before I made the comment. If you can’t manage your own finances or affairs in general, you have few choices. Die, get your sh*t together and bite the bullet, or grovel on you hands and knees across broken glass while the terms to correct your folly are dictated by your savior. That would include martial law until the emergency is deemed over. Unintended consequences, usually easily predictable, never deserve any mercy.
Illegal aliens?
Illegal Immigrants?
Is that like “Yankees”, and “Damned Yankees”?
CA will lead the way to Socialist Paradise:
British Single-Payer System Hell: Tell Me Again About Socialized Medicine, Bernie/AOC?
Delays for cancer treatment are the worst on record as it emerges one in five patients has to wait more than two MONTHS to start hospital treatment
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7130645/Delays-cancer-treatment-NHS-worst-record.html
The strategy is becoming more and more obvious:
The Democrats and their supporters—especially in the media—are counting on a strategy of totally overwhelming the electorate with a tsunami of BoolSheet.
https://pjmedia.com/trending/new-york-times-thinks-nobel-laureate-milton-friedman-is-the-gateway-to-the-alt-right/
(Basically, they’ve decided that updating Orwell for 21st Century use—or more accurately, resurrecting the Soviet Union’s tried-and-true methods of brainwashing and confounding the masses—is the a winner.)
“But it is a logical sounding argument, so they make it anyway, the facts be damned.
Why does emergency room usage go up? I have seen articles that attempt to explain, that I don’t remember well, so I won’t attempt to butcher the topic.”
First sentence: applies to lots of legislation and lobbying.
Second sentence: I used to work with the poor and indigent as part of my church callings. Many of them were very nice people, some quite intelligent and just having a run of bad luck, but most of them were not big on looking ahead about dealing with potential problems.
They would ignore symptoms that most of us would get checked by our GP, because they didn’t have one, until “suddenly” there was a crisis that had to be dealt with at 9pm Friday night.
I have also taken people to the ER whose crisis could wait until the morning, probably with better results, but they didn’t know how to deal with that either.
Without training (yes, that’s the right word; the middle-class gets it growing up) in how to manage health care, all they know how to do is go to the ER.
So, I have some sympathy with the drive to provide insurance (which is still not health care, just a gateway to it) to everyone, because they don’t or can’t get it on their own initiative, but I think the way the Democrats want to do it is insane, and ultimately unsustainable, and the Republicans have never got their act together on a feasible plan.
The proliferation of community clinics that are more than a GP doctors’ offices, but don’t do the expensive ER treatments, and take public insurance (or at least treat people without any) should be reducing the load at the all-service hospitals, but people need to learn how to use them.
PS: I realized the Democrats were not really interested in providing health care, as opposed to centralizing power and skimming tax dollars, when I saw how much effort they expended in shutting down or restricting religious charitable hospitals, and regulating health providers to the point of driving them out of business.
George H W Bush put US troops in Somalia at the tail end of his term. (Possibly in consultation with the incoming admin.)
Purpose?: help with food aid to starving people. Warlords and clans used food aid as means to power and profit, so Pres. Clinton eventually expanded the mission, seeking to stop the bad guys. Aspin took the fall for turning down requests for armor.
As Venezuela, Cuba and N. Korea demonstrate, God will not deliver a society from the consequences of what they insist upon embracing.
When people start giving divine messages out warning about a calamity, usually the timer has started ticking by that time. If the entire country refuses to repent or things goes worse, the Divine Counsel (also known as the Divine Assembly of gods) will allow human free will to destroy itself.
, I think it was Bill Clinton and Sec. Def. Les Aspin that sent our troops to Somalia.
No, It was Clinton who decided to nation build and sent the troops after war lords.
Buch I sent them for “humanitarian relief.’
Bush, not Buch. Yes, Aspin did not allow tanks so when the guys got shot down on one of Clinton’s missions, the troops had to ask Pakistanis for a tank.
A soon to-be former California resident here. At the present moment I’m overseas but on return to the US I will moving to a Southern state. I will bring my conservative values with me. The state of CA makes me sick to my stomach.
It’s been probably over a decade and a half now since the incident, but it remains in my mind still.
My wife had been rear-ended as she drove home from work one evening, her face was numb, and we were worried. So, we went to the local Northern Virginia ER that was part of the hospital in the nearest small town, which had seen a very evident influx of Hispanics.
Well, when we got to the ER, it appeared that the majority of people in the waiting room were Hispanic–large families, pregnant women, and a lot of their kids.
My wife initially got seen by a nurse for the couple of minutes it took to take her basic information, get a description of her injury, and a quick BP check.
Then, we awaited around for an hour, as we watched the people already there—a lot of them with apparently sick kids— go in to be treated, only to be replaced by other people.
Came an hour and three quarters, and my wife—who was in a lot of discomfort—still hadn’t been seen.
So, we just gave up, and left. The first and, so far, the only time we’ve ever done that.
Luckily, my wife was able to schedule an appointment to see our family doctor the next morning, and he immediately arranged for her to go to that same hospital for a CAT scan—in the part of the building just around the corner from that ER.
From then on we tried to steer clear of that ER, which all of these Hispanics were obviously (over)using as the source for their primary care.
Sometime later, I happened to read in the local newspaper that, that year, the hospital in which the ER was lodged had had to absorb something like several hundred thousand dollars in “unpaid” bills for treatment.
Who, I wondered, would ultimately end up paying those unpaid bills, and in what form?
Higher costs for treatment at the hospital? Some kind of government i.e. taxpayer funded bailout? Or, perhaps, a local, stand alone hospital that was no longer viable in this financial environment and just disappeared, or was taken over?
Actually, a couple of years later, that same newspaper reported that our local hospital ended up being gobbled up by a very large local hospital group.
Hospital officials tried to put a good face on this development, but we no longer had our own, independent, stand alone hospital.
I wonder if all those unpaid bills had something to do with that?
Snow – the obvious solution, hence never implemented, would be to (1) recognize that the laws forced them to be a primary care giver to the poor and indigent; (2) realize that they could not keep tying up the trauma units and personnel in the ER with non-emergency or non-critical care; (3) establish a second “minor care” clinic, also open 24/7 (see my comment above), and triage the incoming patients to send routine cases to the clinic.
Much too obvious.
There is probably a regulation forbidding it to happen.
PS taxpayers and the hospital owners would still be on the hook for unpaid bills, but the cost would be lower.
I doubt they would be allowed to ask for citizenship ID, but the accountants could estimate how much of a bill to send Washington to divvy up among the home countries of non-legal-residents.
Not that Washington would, but they should — take it off the top of foreign aid.
PPSS How much of the remittances to home countries could have paid for their medical care, undertaken in the routine manner in which middle-class taxpayers have learned to use?
There is probably a regulation forbidding it to happen.
Most likely. But you can get around it Chicago style if you have attractive women as assets or a lot of money for bribes.
Humans are easy to manipulate.
The Tyranny of the State is not that they have the power to kill. The Tyranny of the State is when they make ordinary citizens and slaves feel relieved and happy, seeing others be ground to dust by the State’s power.
An Alternative healing care can be built with just 5-10 dollars per person per treatment. But that’s because those of us who use divine healing arts, don’t need money from pharmaceutical research and patents, or the palm grease required to push that through the FDA.
But, good thing for exceptional America, that the Doctors Rule. You need a doctor’s license for that jazz. So the supply is also limited from that side as well.
Well, when we got to the ER, it appeared that the majority of people in the waiting room were Hispanic–large families, pregnant women, and a lot of their kids.
Much of that is economics.
The husbands spend all their time working for money, 50% sent back to Mexico as “taxes” to the corrupt state. The mothers then have a lot of time on their hands. They can take the bus.
But given a choice between 500 dollar “check ups” that don’t do anything except prescribe even more expensive medication, and a free ER? The choice is obvious.
Give them a 5 dollar, a 50 dollar option, and they wouldnt surge all into the stupid ER.
“Free” means traffick jam. But if the quality of the free is ‘bad’, then a good alternative will win a monopoly (Amazon and Google).
Not to worry, Mike — they will simply make it mandatory for doctors, hospitals, and other providers to render service for low (or NO!) reimbursement or lose their license.
One thing I’ve learned in almost 40 years of living in Los Angeles — you never, ever, go to the E.R. voluntarily. You call your doctor, regardless of the hour, and have him or her admit you as an inpatient. Learned that at Cedars twenty-five years ago when my daughter broke her arm on a Saturday.
they will simply make it mandatory for doctors, hospitals, and other providers to render service for low (or NO!) reimbursement or lose their license.
Which means doctors will retire even faster, and use their money in the stock market for retirement instead.
Then all you will have available as healers are the quantum new agers and people like me. Ooo, scary isn’t it.
Really enjoy the writing on this blog. I’m still suffering as a lifelong Californian, paying my way. My wife and I like being close to the kids and grandkids, and we have excellent insurance. But there is a sense of dread as the DNC-Media Uniparty creates ever more incentive for the good people to leave. My vote will be cancelled out by a “harvested vote” (like last time) and probably will be cast by a non-citizen.
Nice to see Dr. K here too!
The multi-year failure of the Reps to have a better, more reasonable plan, with better incentives and more real choices, is one of the big reasons to NOT vote Rep. Most Rep think tanks have a plan, but there seems to be no Rep leader, including Trump, pushing any one particular plan.
With its good points and bad points, as all real plans have.
Too much magic thinking and far far too much voter demand for good points in plans without bad points – magic.
Harry Potter was very very popular, but unrealistic fiction. We need real tradeoffs. The longer the Reps go without articulating an alternative, the louder and stronger and, understandably and realistically, the copying of Europe’s socialized medicine model will be ever more attractive.
The semi-magic of “Fully Automated Luxury Communism” is where the low-info voters will be going, and the attraction is strongest without an alternative plan (Liz Warren seems to “have a plan” for solving most issues with more gov’t).
From Governor Newsom, per the posting (my boldface):
So let’s say let’s say that in the State of Calif., there are just two people, me & the Guv’nor. “everybody.” Now as it happens I pay no taxes, as I earn $2/mo as a trash-picker. My Medicare or Medicaid or whatever-it-is premium is 10¢ / mo.
Whereas the Guvnor has enough to get by nicely, even without my 10¢.
So we all pull together on “health care.” Namely, I get what I need for 10¢, which in this case means, say, $ 50,000 for brain surgery and an ongoing $ 3,000/mo for dialysis.*
So over the course of a year I pay $1.20 for my medical care and Gavin pays $ 86,000 + his own medical and insurance bills (which are $ 1.20 less than they’d have been without my contribution). So see, everybody, Gavin as well as I, pays less for “health care.”
Such a deal!
*Or whatever the actual costs would be.