|
 Governor Gavin Newsom, a first-term Democrat facing a Republican-led
recall election in September, said the bill is a key milestone in
efforts to bring universal healthcare to the nation's most populous
state.
California leads all 50 U.S. states in the number of unauthorized
immigrants - roughly 2.9 million in 2014, according to the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security, though other estimates put the
figure closer to 2.2 million.
But California is not the first state to provide comprehensive
public medical benefits to its undocumented elderly population.
Illinois last December became the first to extend state-funded
healthcare coverage to all non-citizens age 65 and older whose
immigration status had left them ineligible for Medicaid.
Newsom's action builds on two earlier expansions of Medi-Cal -
California's version of the state-federal Medicaid system for the
poor and disabled. They provided full-scale coverage to undocumented
children, then to young adults until their 26th birthday regardless
of immigration status beginning last year.
California already offers limited Medi-Cal benefits to undocumented
residents of all ages for emergency room visits and some
pregnancy-related care.
More than 536,000 undocumented young people, aged 25 and under, were
enrolled as full-scale beneficiaries as of January, along with
nearly 345,000 undocumented adults receiving limited coverage,
according to state figures.
[to top of second column] |
 Newsom pointed to California's
budget surplus and the COVID-19 crisis as
catalysts leading to the latest expansion,
projected to cost the state $1.3 billion a year
when fully implemented. The
measure will "ensure thousands of older undocumented Californians,
many of whom have been serving on the front lines of the pandemic,
can access critical health care services," Newsom said in a
statement.
He signed the bill at a health clinic in Fresno County, in the heart
of California's agricultural region where many undocumented
residents are employed as migrant farm workers.
The latest expansion will qualify all income-eligible residents age
50 and older, including unauthorized immigrants, for full-fledged
benefits starting in May 2022, and is expected to enlarge Medi-Cal
rolls by about 235,000 people.
The expansion will be entirely funded by the state; federal law
forbids U.S. tax dollars from covering immigrants who entered the
country illegally.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by
Kristina Cooke in San Francisco
[© 2021 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2021 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content |
