This headline is some absolute bullshit.
California already had health insurance for undocumented immigrants, as does Massachusetts. It's just limited to emergency care and pregnancy care.
California is expanding their existing coverage to comprehensive health care including primary care, which is cheaper than letting medical conditions get so completely out of control that they require expensive and disabling emergency hospitalizations.
Well, that's all what the article says, it just doesn't fit in the headline. It does identify that the eligibility criteria are removed by specifying all.
I mean, it's also just nice to keep people healthy as well. Medical care should not cost a thing.
I'm going to say it and I consider myself very liberal. But why are we providing insurance for them when we're not even covering our own citizens?? How does this benefit the people who live in California and contribute to its GDP in a significant way? And I'm not saying undocumented immigrants don't contribute to the gdP but they are undocumented. Everything happens under the table if they are. I would much rather California work on universal healthcare system for their state that includes immigrants. And I'm definitely not saying just because they're undocumented doesn't mean they don't deserve this. But where is the benefit? These people can't vote. They're not paying taxes. Yet they're reaping rewards of other people who do. Why doesn't California put this money towards its massive homeless problem or it's massive drug problem or it's massive crime problem? I just simply do not understand why they would make something like this a priority over so many other problem ?
And before y'all eat me alive.I am genuinely asking because I don't understand why this is something they feel is important? There are so many other issues plaguing their state alone. Why do they feel this is a priority when we're not even taking care of our own citizens? Please only respond if you can genuinely give me insightful information or an education on this. Because like i said i consider myself very liberal and in other context I'd think this is great. But we are facing some many challenges just among our own documented citizens that i just feel like this is a great step but not the step we should be taking.
One small point: Undocumented immigrants absolutely do pay taxes. They pay sales taxes, gas taxes, and contribute billions annually in income taxes. It may be true that not all of them pay income taxes, but many of them do.
And not for nothin, but there are plenty of citizens who pay little or no taxes too. And if you're worried about people not paying their fair share of taxes, it's weird to focus on such an underprivileged group when our corporations and billionaires are almost the whole fuckin pie chart. It's not even close.
"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.
California is trying to set up a single payer healthcare system. This is not a case of California calling it quits and not bothering to try to cover everyone.
Are you a California voter? If you are, youre asking a very good question. If you’re not, well, there’s no we involved, this is a state funded program, and the state of California actually pays more in to the federal government than it receives from it, so it can prop up freeloading red states, primarily the south. So, as a non Californian, not my circus, not my monkeys.
All of that said, I agree with you, American citizens should benefit from American tax dollars before anyone else.
The correct thing to do is, California should expand Medicaid coverage for Texans. Obviously.
I actually like this idea. No better way to stick it to Texans than to insure the hell out of them and show them how shitty their state is.
I think it's because it's ultimately cheaper to cover them than to let them go to the emergency room and have to pay exorbitant prices on the back end. That's a guess though.
Immigrants are part of any economy that flourishes. Always has been. Egypt, Rome, France, England all had a high population of immigration. It's to be expected with the world's six largest economy (even bigger than Russia's) there is a need for those doing these sorts of jobs to be taken care of.
As others have pointed out, they do pay taxes. They do live here. Health care should be a human right. Not a bargaining chip. The fact that universal health care isn't even considered an option for the US is ridiculous.
What makes you think Medi-Cal isn't available for California citizens?
Experience. It's very easy to lose medi-cal for making still not enough to afford rent.
The Medicaid income limit that you're referring to will apply to the undocumented immigrants too.
It's not like they're expanding Medi-Cal to be available to "citizens within the income limit and any undocumented immigrant regardless of financial eligibility"
The benefits cliff is real and it sucks. I think Covered California does a pretty good job bridging the healthcare gap at least. Housing and nutrition assistance, not so much.
California has a huge labor shortage. It is extraordinarily expensive to live near any major population center. Agriculture is a huge industry, but many service, hospitality industries, etc. still need and require people living near big areas where the average housing price is 500k+ (this is including 1-2 commute to achieve that price excluding our high gasoline costs)
Who the fuck can sustainably work at or near minimum wage with those costs, paying full taxes.
This is an attempt at a labor policy that keeps all tech people happy they get can go out to dinner on Tuesday night.
The answer to your question is this; do the math. It turns out that it's less expensive to cover everyone than it is to rely on a system wherein illegals can only access healthcare at the ER.
It really is as simple as that.
Didn't California recently also pass a Public Option for healthcare, aiming for full coverage of Californians in general?
Great steps in the right direction.
For us non-US readers; what's the difference between health insurance and healthcare? For comparison, in Australia private health gives you a room, nice TV, edible food etc but you don't get priority. When it comes to essential surgery or treatment you join the line with everyone else.
Health insurance is the system we use to pay for healthcare. Insurance is made available by your employer, you then pay premiums in order to buy and keep your insurance, and once you actually need healthcare, your insurance helps cover some of the costs of receiving care.
Everyone in the states needs health insurance, not because of how affordable it makes taking care of emergencies, but because, if you don't have insurance, you have to pay the prices that the medical provider and insurance companies made up on how much procedures cost, so they can give each other a discount on those insane prices.
For instance, if you have insurance in the states and you go to the hospital for a nasty fall that maybe broke something. Nothing was broken, but they had to take x-rays. Well, you have to pay for the x-rays, and the time that the staff was needed for you. We're going to pretend, for this case, that your insurance won't deny coverage since it "wasn't medically necessary". So you'd get a bill between $200-$300.
But if you didn't have insurance, or were denied coverage, you have to pay full price. But that price isn't the price that anyone actually pays unless they're in your predicament. You see, the provider and insurance had gotten together to determine how much would be paid for any given procedure, but they make the deal seem much better to their respective bosses by inflating the price of the procedure before negotiations, so that the insurance pays a "discount" that's similar to the actual cost of the procedure. Which is great for them, but if you get treatment without insurance (or your insurance denies coverage) you have to pay the fake, inflated price that the provider said it cost before they negotiated the price back down to something reasonable with the insurance companies. So, to go back to my example above, those x-rays and some time with staff that didn't lead anywhere will probably cost you more in the neighborhood of $2000-$3000 if you aren't covered.
This has a double cooling effect. One, it forces more people to have health insurance out of fear of paying those stupidly insane prices. And two, it makes people avoid going to the doctor for minor issues for fear of being denied coverage since "it wasn't medically necessary". Great for profitability, terrible for humans.
Let's not forget that the premium is usually taken from your paycheck, and can range from $15-$750/pay cycle depending on the insurance plan. In my case, I'm paying $450/month as the premium, plus $90/visit. The healthcare system doesn't have an office near my home, so I travel an hour and a half to see the doctor, and it's 45 minutes to the nearest hospital.
For reference, I was in a car accident that broke both of my wrists and I had to go to the ER. I was fine other than my wrists.
The ER use for about.. 3 hours? Was over $10,000. Because my health insurance refused coverage since it was in an auto accident.
Luckily my bodily injury coverage on my insurance paid.
Then I needed surgery and physical therapy. All of which were not covered by my health insurance.
The surgery was about $32,000. (Included the metal plates and screws/pins as well as the surgical room and recovery + surgeon and anesthesia).
All said and done total cost for having my wrists broken was about $70,000. None of which was covered by my health insurance and thank god my parents (I was still on their car insurance) paid for underinsured motorist coverage because the drunk that caused the accident didn't have insurance. I didn't go into debt ONLY because of that coverage.
They charged me $40 for 2 Tylenol they gave me in the ER while I waited for them to come set my wrists and give me the big girl pain killers. $18 for a pregnancy test too prior to surgery that I couldn't refuse. Unreal.
Emergency rooms are required to try and stabilize patients before they discharge them. These patients are billed after they leave the hospital, insured or not.
If I try to schedule a checkup or procedure, I need to give my insurance card first. Uninsured can pay for a flat fee upfront. If they can't pay, they get no service.
With insurance, things get complicated. The facility will try to give you an estimated cost of the service. But it's always a back and forth with 2 or 3 parties; the insurance, facility, and doctor network. If there is a disagreement between parties, you the patient get a bigger bill. Even when you payed for the procedure beforehand.
It's even more fun when, for example, a scan is covered but the person reading the results is not. Or a surgeon and surgery is covered, but the anesthesiologist is not. Or your usual ob/gyn isn't working when you go into labor at 2am on a Sunday.
Yea, I fucking hate bill balancing. We received a $10,000 bill for a neonatal consult a day after my son was born. He had a little fluid in his lungs, was gone in an hour or two.
The doctor was part of the hospital system but I guess that 2 miles he drove to the women's center justifies a $10k bill. Our healthcare is broken.
It's complicated and shitty, but people are treated the same for the most part, there's no "fast pass" for having better insurance. Hospital and doctors offices are private. You can have private health issues, or if you qualify because you are poor or disabled you can get free health insurance from some states which then pays the hospital or doctor for your care. If you have your own private health insurance through a work group plan or you pay for yourself then you might have to pay a percentage of the total cost called a "copay" or you might have to pay the total cost until you have paid a yearly deductible and then you will only pay a percentage of the total cost until you reach an "out of pocket maximum" for the year which can range from a few thousand to ten thousand or more dollars.
This is a good first step and the only real issue is that this doesn't go quite far enough.
We need Medi-Cal for all in this state.
This is going to sound insane, but I can't get rid of Medi-cal. I did need it during covid because my insurance was tied to work and I was living with some elderly folk. I kept it when I moved in with my (then) boyfriend because I was in an area where I struggled to find a job. But then we got married, and I have been on his insurance for more than a year. I've called (even spoken to a few people), and I've written letters, but they just keep renewing it. Most recently I tried calling again but I gave up after waiting for an hour.
I couldn't even use it if it wanted to because my name is different now, but the fact that I can't communicate with them to let them know that I don't need it is frustrating
And that made me wonder. I can't get through to them to tell them that I don't need it, right? How the hell does someone who DOES need it get through to get some help?
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