Most in California support state coverage of health care for migrants without legal status: Survey

Most California voters support the state’s efforts to increase health care coverage for migrants without legal status, a new survey found.

According to a new survey from the University of California, Berkeley and Politico, 21 percent of surveyed voters believe the state should continue to offer Medicaid coverage to migrants without legal status, even if it means there will be cuts elsewhere in the budget.  

Thirty-two percent of respondents say California should continue offering the program to migrants without legal status, but if budget cuts are deemed necessary to make it work, people in the country legally should receive priority.

About a third of respondents, 31 percent, say California never should have opened its Medicaid coverage up to migrants without legal status, and 17 percent say the state should partially or fully reverse the decision to offer the health care coverage.

The survey comes just days after California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed legislation to close a $2.8 billion Medicaid funding gap.

Republicans in the state were pushing back on Newsom’s decision, arguing that migrants without legal status should not be receiving access to the care because there’s a gap in the budget.

Newsom's signed legislation is part of the state's plan to fix the $6.2 billion gap in the Medicaid budget after California launched an attempt to give all low-income adults coverage regardless of immigration status.

The state has surpassed its original budget because it underestimated the number of people who would sign up for Medicaid services. State leaders have not disclosed how many people enrolled via the expansion.

Jack Citrin, a longtime political science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told Politico that the findings of the survey can offer state lawmakers direction as they grapple with the costs, which were higher than expected.

“I think there will be resistance among the state government to cutting Medicaid, but if they have to, presumably they might start changing which undocumented get access, maybe limiting it to children and elderly people, rather than everyone,” he said.

Medi-Cal, the name of the state’s Medicaid program, has become controversial as the state looks to expand coverage and make its own version of universal health care. Republican state lawmakers have pushed back on Newsom, saying he's “bankrupted the program” and made legal residents “come second.”

While Newsom has said he doesn’t have any plans to roll back the plan, other Democrats say tough choices lie ahead.

The survey was conducted among 1,025 California respondents April 1-14 and has a margin of error of 5 percentage points.

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