Why California lawmakers want to expand health coverage for state’s undocumented
As the coronavirus pandemic unequally impacts the wages and health of California’s immigrant workers, state Assemblyman Joaquin Arambula, D-Fresno, is seeking to re-introduce legislation that expands health care for undocumented adults.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has made it cruelly clear that everyone in California must have access to health care, including undocumented adults,” Arambula said in a statement. “COVID-19 has mercilessly hit hardest our communities of color, especially those who work in our fields and in other essential jobs to keep our economy and health care delivery system going during this crisis.”
Assembly Bill 4, jointly authored by Arambula and Democratic Assemblyman David Chiu, would expand Medi-Cal coverage, the state’s version of Medicaid, to low-income adults regardless of their immigration status. The expansion could benefit an estimated 917,000 low-income undocumented Californians, ages 26 or older, according to a February 2020 report by the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
The expansion to undocumented adults would cost the state an estimated $2.6 billion, according to the report.
Democrats and advocates successfully expanded Medi-Cal coverage to low-income children in 2016, regardless of their immigration status. They also pushed for a similar expansion for undocumented young adults, under the age of 26, which Gov. Gavin Newsom approved in his budget plan last year. The expanded Medi-Cal coverage for young adults began in January 2020.
Over the summer, a coalition of immigration advocates and Democratic lawmakers unsuccessfully pushed for Medi-Cal expansion for undocumented seniors, over the age of 65, as the state budget faced a $50 billion deficit due to the coronavirus pandemic.
With a potential COVID-19 vaccine several months away from reaching the general population and as the state faces a $26 billion budget surplus, advocates of the expansion say the time is ripe for undocumented adults and seniors to be included.
“There has never been a more urgent time to ensure all of our communities have access to healthcare,” Chui said in a statement.
The Public Policy Institute of California estimates California is home to more than 2 million undocumented immigrants. About 69% of California’s undocumented population identifies as Mexican, according to the Pew Research Center.
Nearly 12% of California Latinos are uninsured — twice the rate of other groups — according to the California Latino Economic Institute.
Sarah Dar, director of health and public benefits policy for the California Immigrant Policy Center, said undocumented immigrants are particularly vulnerable during the pandemic and have been excluded from receiving unemployment insurance, federal COVID-19 stimulus payments and are disproportionately working jobs where social distancing isn’t possible.
“It’s a community that’s disproportionately impacted by COVID, and then disproportionately ineligible for the relief that comes with it,” she said. “The state has tried to chip away at that a little bit but it’s ... not enough.”
She noted Medi-Cal expansion for undocumented seniors was included in Newsom’s January budget plan this year, but was excluded from his revised plan, released in May, due to the pandemic-induced economic downturn.
“We feel like it’s promising that the state is going to make progress on this coverage for seniors and the rest of undocumented immigrants,” Dar said. “But the budget crisis is going to make it tough. It’s going to require that as advocates we push, and it’s not going to be automatic.”
This story was originally published December 8, 2020 at 5:00 AM.