California lawmakers, advocates decry cuts to undocumented immigrant health care
Lawmakers and advocates on Monday sought to shore up support for a set of bills seeking to undo blows to health coverage for California’s undocumented immigrant population, as the Legislature confronts the impacts of both a Republican-controlled federal government and the state’s own fiscal crunch.
For years, advocates and California’s elected officials, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, pushed to expand health insurance coverage for more and more of the state’s lowest income people, reaching a point where only 6% of state residents were uninsured.
Undocumented immigrants were among those gaining coverage, which provided access to regular doctor visits and preventative care .
To balance the budget last year, Newsom and the Legislature halted Medi-Cal enrollment for undocumented immigrants beginning in January, and imposed a $30 premium on those already enrolled, beginning in July 2027. Now the state’s coverage gains are under further threat. Republicans changed Medi-Cal eligibility — which includes imposing work requirements on many recipients — in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to an extent the Legislative Analyst’s Office says will kick millions of people off the insurance roles. Advocates say that level of disenrollment will sharply diminish the state’s health care system as a whole, by robbing hospitals and clinics of revenue.
Newsom’s 2026 budget, meanwhile, continues to cut into health care for undocumented immigrants, this time largely by applying the federal government’s new work requirements to them as well. Advocates say in doing so Newsom has gone beyond what Republicans in Washington D.C. are imposing, because undocumented immigrants are covered through state coffers, not federal dollars.
Some lawmakers are pushing back. Legislation introduced last month would block the work requirements for the undocumented immigrants covered by the state, and would also undo last year’s freeze on new enrollments.
“These decisions do not save money for California,” state Sen. María Elena Durazo, D-Los Angeles, said at a rally hosted by health care advocates Monday. “What they do is shift the cost. They shift the cost from the state onto the counties. They shift the cost from hospitals and clinics into emergency rooms that are already stretched thin, and ultimately, they shift the cost onto all of us.”
Durazo introduced a bill last month to undo last year’s freeze.
Around the same time, Assembly Health Committee Chair Mia Bonta, D-Alameda, introduced a bill that would reject work requirements on state-funded Med-Cal recipients. Supporters of Newsom’s proposal have described it as a fairness policy, to create a uniform system of work requirements.
“Governor Newsom championed these expansions and remains committed to protecting the immigrant communities who contribute to the fabric and economy of California,” his office said in a statement Monday.
But Bonta characterized the governor’s budget to The Bee as advancing an ill-founded Republican policy, “laced with some nationalism,” that the majority of Californians have repeatedly rebuked as they’ve pushed for more health care for undocumented immigrants, not less.
“Why would we be imposing and adopting a hateful sensibility around who should be having health care, and also something that is known to be an ineffective strategy” Bonta said. “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
Amid a budget crunch, the lawmakers seeking to stop the rollback of health care to some level face an uphill battle. Newsom has largely expressed opposition to new revenue raising proposals, and is widely seen to be eyeing a 2028 presidential campaign. California’s efforts to expand health coverage to undocumented immigrants has drawn heated opposition from Republicans both nationwide and at home.
Republican lawmakers are opposed to expanding health care to undocumented immigrants, and particularly ready to attack Democrat efforts to raise new revenues to do so.
“If they run a statewide initiative or even if they try to push this through the Legislature the message is going to be, ‘Let’s tax Californians so we can give it to undocumented immigrants,’” Assemblymember David Tangipa, R-Clovis, told The Bee last year. “That is something that a lot of (lawmakers) are going to struggle with.”
Still, progressive lawmakers continue making the case that the state needs to be eyeing new revenue sources to shore up the state’s coffers against federal cuts. So far, only one revenue bill has surfaced — a measure sponsored by Assemblymember Damon Connolly, D-San Rafael, to tighten the tax code for multinational corporations. At Monday’s rally lawmakers, as they have throughout the legislative session, said they were particularly interested in taxing large corporations who don’t provide employees with health care benefits and pay wages so low that their workers rely on Medi-Cal for health insurance.
“Why do we accept a rigged system where we balance the budget on the backs of our health care while letting corporations extort tax loopholes right and left?” Bonta asked at the Tuesday rally. It’s a tax idea Bonta also floated in an interview with Bee reporters late last year. Concrete language has yet to surface, however, and Bonta said Monday it could come through either the legislative budget process or in a bill.
Lobbyists and lawmakers who support new revenue proposals are still feeling out support, Health Access officials told The Bee. Bonta said she remains optimistic that state lawmakers will confront the cuts both in the federal Republicans’ budget bill, and in Newsom’s proposal, including by raising new revenue to fund more health care coverage for more people.
“I think the Legislature is more open to that proposition than we’ve ever seen,” Bonta said.
