California makes history this beginning of the year by becoming the first state in the United States to offer free health care to all low-income undocumented migrants.
Starting this Monday, January 1, 2024, a new state law will allow undocumented foreigners ages 26 to 49 who are below certain income thresholds to have access to full coverage of official state aid Medi-Cal such as other segments of this population already were.
By 2022, undocumented people of all ages represented 40% of the state’s approximately 3.2 million uninsured residents.
Medi-Cal is the California version of Medicaid, the program with federal and state resources that provides health insurance to low-income people.
With this expansion of eligibility, the Golden State, led by Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, advances its ambitious plan to provide medical coverage to all its residents, some 39 million people.
The measure is expected to benefit more than 700,000 migrants at a cost of more than 2.6 billion dollars annually.
The measure marks the largest effort to provide health insurance to Californians in a decade.
“This historic investment speaks to California’s commitment to health care as a human right,” Sen. María Elena Durazo, D-Los Angeles, said in a statement.
California already allowed a good portion of undocumented residents to access Medi-Cal.
In 2015, minors without immigration status were the first to have access to this program. Four years later, eligibility was expanded to those under 26 years of age. And in May 2022, the state began covering people age 50 and older.
Assemblyman Miguel Santiago described this disparity in a statement as “a historical error” that will be solved with the expansion.
The California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) warned that the Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) does not consider access to Medi-Cal health services as a “public charge” so it will not affect possible applications to regularize the immigration status of its beneficiaries.
He added that the information provided by undocumented immigrants will only be used to determine if they qualify. State laws protect the privacy of your information.
Republican legislators who opposed the law warned that the expansion of health coverage for all undocumented immigrants will put pressure on California’s budget, which is estimated to have a deficit of $68 billion in 2024.
