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.
“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.
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.
You mean expand coverage to those who can afford it just because they’re citizens?
That’s not the purpose of the program.