California increases health insurance subsidies to all immigrant adults

Marisol Pantoja Toribio found a lump in her breast in early January. Unprotected and living in California without legal status or family, the usually happy-go-lucky 43-year-old quickly realized how how limited his options were.

I said, ‘What am I going to do?’” he said in Spanish, quickly becoming emotional. He was immediately worried that he might have cancer. “I went back and forth — I did [cancer]I don’t have it, I have it, I don’t have it.” And if he was sick, he added, he wouldn’t be able to work or pay the rent. Without life insurance good, Pantoja Toribio would not be able to find out if he has a serious condition.

Starting this year, Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program, was expanded to include undocumented immigrants, a time that would have worked well for Pantoja Toribio, who lives in the Bay Area city of Brentwood. for three years. But his Medi-Cal application was quickly denied: As a farm laborer making $16 an hour, his annual salary of about $24,000 was too high to qualify for of the program.

California is the first state to expand Medicaid to all eligible adults regardless of immigration status, a move celebrated by health advocates and political leaders across the country. But many immigrants without permanent legal status, especially those living in parts of California where the cost of living is high, earn too much to qualify for Medi-Cal.

The state is moving a bill to expand Medi-Cal, but federal law bars those it calls “unenrolled” from getting insurance subsidies or other benefits from the Affordable Care Act, leaving many employed but they have no health insurance options.

Now, health advocates who fought for Medi-Cal expansion say the next step to achieving health equity is to expand Covered California, the ACA’s state marketplace, to all adults from states ling by passing AB 4.

“There are people in this country who work and are the backbone of many parts of our economy and contribute to their jobs and even taxes… Policy Center, which is one of the two organizations supporting this bill , called #Health4All.

To qualify for Medi-Cal, a person cannot earn more than 138% of the federal poverty level, which is currently about $21,000 a year for a single person. A family of three would need to earn less than $35,632 a year.

For people above those thresholds, the Covered California marketplace offers a variety of health plans, often with state and federal subsidies, that offer premiums as low as $10 a month. The hope is to create what advocates call a “mirror market” on the Covered California website so that immigrants regardless of their status can be offered the same health plans that would only be supported by the state.

Despite the high level of democracy in the legislature, the bill may be more difficult to pass, as the government faces a budget deficit for next year from $38 billion to $73 billion. Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders have announced a $17 billion package to begin closing the gap, but major spending cuts appear inevitable.

It’s unclear how much it would cost to extend California’s coverage to all immigrants, according to Assemblyman Joaquin Arambula, the Fresno Democrat who introduced the bill.

The Center for Immigration Policy estimates that establishing the market would cost at least $15 million. If the bill passes, sponsors will need to find funding for grants, which could run into the billions of dollars a year.

“It’s a tough time to ask for new costs,” Dar said. “The start-up cost of the mirror market is relatively low. So we’re confident that it’s still within the realm of possibility.”

Arambula said he hopes the government will continue to take the lead in improving access to health care for undocumented immigrants.

“I believe we will continue to stand up, as we work to make California for everyone,” he said.

The bill passed the Assembly last July by a vote of 64-9 and now awaits action by the Senate Appropriations Committee, Arambula’s office said.

An estimated 520,000 Californians would be eligible for the Covered California program if not for the lack of legal status, according to the labor research center at the University of California-Berkeley. Pantoja Toribio, who moved to Mexico alone after leaving a bad relationship, said she was lucky. She learned about health care alternatives when she visited the weekly food pantry at Hijas del Campo, a farmworker advocacy organization in Contra Costa County, where they told her she might be eligible for low-income plan through Kaiser Permanente.

Pantoja Toribio applied just before open enrollment closed at the end of January. For that purpose, he learned that the wound on his breast is not cancerous.

“God heard me,” he said. “Thank God.”

This article was published by KFF Health News, which publishes California Healthline, an independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.

This article is reprinted from khn.org, a national newsroom that produces journalism on health issues and is one of the main programs operating at KFF – an independent source of health policy research. beauty, elections and journalism.