California Healthcare Coverage for Illegal Immigrants

The new headline is that California is expected to go further than any other state in the union and offer medical coverage to illegal immigrants. California often finds itself at the forefront of new changes in our society, sometimes for the betterment of society and sometimes not.

California is going to extend this coverage to illegal immigrants by expanding the Medi-Cal program in the state, which is the state's version of Medicaid. By making this change it is expected that an additional 90,000 people will have medical coverage at a cost of $96.1 million. With California making this change I have to think the Medi-Cal program is a great program worthy of being expanded.

The Forbes article, California's Costly, Inaccessible Healthcare System points out more than $67 billion of California's budget goes to healthcare, this is over 1/3 of the state's budget. In addition, private health insurance spending in the state exceeds $100 billion. With all this spending, in a study from George Mason University, California's healthcare system still ranks 40th among all 50 states. The problem is that because of low payout rates by Medi-Cal, doctors are refusing to treat Medi-Cal patients. What good is healthcare insurance if there is no doctor to treat you?

There are other problems with the existing Medi-Cal program. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California is set to sign into law the new changes allowing the healthcare coverage of illegal immigrants. Even with the intent to expand the program an article from CALmatters, California can’t wait for Washington’s approval to control health care spending, indicates that Governor Newsom has filed a request with the Federal government to completely redesign California's healthcare system. So Governor Newsom is set to expand a system that doesn't work to the point it needs to be completely redesigned, this doesn't make much sense to me.

The numbers surrounding the program appear to be confusing. The CALmatters article, California poised to go further than any state to insure the undocumented—too pricey, or about time? provided the 90,000 people covered at a cost of $96.1 million, but indicated the program could provide coverage for about one half of the state's 2.2 million illegal immigrants. Far more than the original 90,000 people covered. From The Hill, the article California lawmakers vote to offer health insurance to undocumented immigrants puts the cost of the expansion at $3 billion annually.

My contention here is not that California should or shouldn't do this. The cost of the program will be funded by the people and businesses of California through taxes since there are Federal laws prohibiting Federal money from being used in this manner. My contention is the program doesn't seem to be well thought out. Our constitution established a dual sovereignty system in which each of the states could act as a test bed of democracy and public policy. From these test beds the good ideas could be adopted by other states and the bad ideas could be cast aside. Now we just have to wait and see how bad this idea really is.