“Cash-strapped California will ring in the new year by offering free health care to all undocumented immigrants who qualify for the state’s government-run health insurance program,” reports the New York Post:
The state, which faces a $68 billion deficit in the next fiscal year, has been steadily expanding access to its Medi-Cal health insurance program for low-income residents, allowing undocumented children to qualify for the taxpayer-funded program in 2015, then expanding it under Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom to cover undocumented adults between the ages of 19-25 and those over 50.
On Jan. 1, California will become the first state to offer free health care to all qualifying individuals — regardless of immigration status or age.
In May, Democrats in the California Legislature celebrated the budget deal struck by Newsom and state lawmakers that led to the latest Medi-Cal expansion, which will see some 700,000 undocumented immigrants, ages 26-49, obtain full coverage under the program….However, some health care experts worry that expanding the program is unwise given unprecedented state revenue shortfalls and health care shortages.
“The expansion was a bad idea when the state’s coffers were flush. Now that California is struggling to make ends meet, using taxpayer money to cover non-citizens is simply irresponsible,” Sally Pipes, a health care policy expert and the president and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute, a California-based think tank, told The Post….Simon Hankinson, a border security and immigration expert with the Heritage Foundation, said in a social media post that he expects the federal government to eventually bail out the program.
“No surprise [California], despite budget deficit, will give illegal immigrants subsidized health care,” Hankinson wrote on X. “The question is how and when they’ll get the federal taxpayer to bail them out. NY, IL, and MA want to know.”….
The latest Medi-Cal expansion will come at a cost of $2.6 billion per year.
So California will spend billions giving illegal aliens free healthcare, even before illegal aliens with chronic diseases flood into California to take advantage of taxpayer-funded free healthcare. Economist Daniel Di Martino, who supports immigration by productive workers, warns that California’s action is “turning the country into the world’s welfare magnet. The consequence will be more and, importantly, poorer and older immigrants coming to America.”
When Illinois began covering illegal aliens, it cost far more than the state expected, and it had to cap the number of illegal aliens it covered, to keep spending down to $550 million rather than rapidly increasing to over $1 billion. California has several times more illegal aliens than Illinois, and will have to pay far more to cover its illegal aliens.
California’s state budget has skyrocketed since 2021, when state spending per resident was already about 60% higher than in the typical state. “Newsom and legislative Democrats have increased spending by more than 60%,” laments a Republican legislator.
One way to reduce California’s budget deficit would be to end free healthcare for illegal aliens. Another way to cut the deficit would be to attract businesses that pay taxes. California’s business climate is bad due to excessive regulations and red tape, so businesses are moving to places like Florida, even though California’s weather is better. Chocolate and rocket factories have moved out of California to states with less red tape and fewer anti-business lawsuits. Florida ranks high in the Forbes Best States for Business rankings, and California ranks low.
California has adopted pro-crime policies that have contributed to an exodus of residents, with high living costs being an even bigger factor. California has a violent crime rate of 500 per 100,000 people in 2022, compared to 259 per 100,000 people in Florida. Former California Governor Jerry Brown approved “parole for roughly 2,300 lifers convicted of murder.” His successor, Gavin Newsom, has been even softer on crime. Under him, California made tens of thousands of violent offenders eligible for early release (including killers), and it earlier expanded parole for young adults who committed murder.
Newsom and Brown ignored the lessons of history. Crime in California fell significantly after California voters adopted Proposition 8, which mandated longer sentences for repeat offenders. A National Bureau of Economic Research study found those longer sentences deterred many crimes from being committed. Sentencing enhancements prevented crime by dissuading people outside of prison from committing crimes, not just by keeping convicted criminals in prison where it’s harder to commit a crime.
Another way to reduce the California budget deficit would be to cancel $25 minimum wage for workers in healthcare facilities that California enacted this year. As Cal Matters notes, Governor “Newsom signed the deal between unions and hospitals last month without a clear estimate of how much it would cost. It turns out the wage increase could drive up the cost of providing care for government agencies by at least $4 billion in 2024-25.” The $25 minimum wage for healthcare workers will cover all workers in the covered healthcare facilities, even “janitors, housekeeping staff, groundskeepers and gift shop staff,” meaning that employees like janitors will be paid more if they work in a healthcare facility than if they work in any other kind of facility, for no reason.
