Latino, Bay Area lawmakers want to restore health care for immigrants. Can they do it?

The Weekly Dispatch

Community-powered immigration news from the Bay Area.

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Welcome to El Tímpano’s Weekly Dispatch. I’m Vanessa G. Sánchez, senior health equity reporter.

Welcome to El Tímpano’s Weekly Dispatch. I’m Vanessa G. Sánchez, senior health equity reporter.

We learned this week that ICE agents, tipped off by TSA, placed Angelina Lopez-Jimenez, a Guatemalan Indigenous asylum-seeker who had been living in Contra Costa, on her knees and arrested her in front of her young daughter at the San Francisco International Airport. She was deported within two days. This action sparked widespread condemnation and protests across the Bay Area. It’s still unclear what role local law enforcement officials played, but my colleague Erica Hellerstein, our senior immigration, labor and economics reporter, will be monitoring this story.  

This month, Latino and Bay Area lawmakers introduced legislation in Sacramento to restore Medi-Cal access for immigrants and reject stricter work requirements for those who want to remain in the program. They are also asking Gov. Gavin Newsom to backfill funding to pay for health care coverage for some lawfully present immigrants. 

This comes after the governor and state lawmakers, in the middle of a fiscal deficit, froze new enrollments to the program in January and ended dental coverage for immigrant adults 19 and older starting in July. They also added a monthly premium, which takes effect next year.  

A few months after these changes passed last year, President Donald Trump imposed strict work requirements for anyone in the state receiving subsidized health care and restricted lawfully present immigrants from accessing Medicare and Medicaid, deeming around 200,000 immigrants in California who are refugees, asylees, domestic violence and human trafficking victims ineligible. 

These policies combined are projected to impact approximately 3 million Californians, including immigrants, according to projections by the UC Berkeley Labor Center. 

In response, Senator María Elena Durazo of Los Angeles and Assembly member Mia Bonta of Oakland introduced bills to ensure immigrants can continue to access health care.  

Durazo, one of four lawmakers to vote against the Medi-Cal freeze last year, proposes reopening enrollment and keeping dental benefits for all immigrants, regardless of their immigration status. Her bill doesn’t eliminate a $30 monthly premium, which immigrant families will start paying in July of next year. 

“When people cannot see a primary care doctor, they do not stop getting sick, they wait, and when they can wait no longer, they show up in the emergency room at 10 times the cost of a routine visit,” said Durazo during a press conference earlier this month.

California did the unthinkable a decade ago in 2016 when it decided to start expanding Medi-Cal to eventually cover all low-income immigrants, regardless of immigration status. Since the expansion began, around 1.6 million immigrants have received routine checkups, filled cavities, and controlled their blood pressure. 

Still, the widely praised health policy came under scrutiny last year when the state said it was spending $2.7 billion more than what it had anticipated on coverage expansions for immigrants. Newsom then announced the state could no longer afford to sustain it and froze new enrollments for immigrant adults over 19. 

Durazo’s core argument now is that the new restrictions and freeze won’t save the state money but rather transfer the cost to counties, hospitals, clinics, and ultimately, taxpayers.  

“Those are the numbers we need to pay attention to,” she said. “When we accept a two-tiered health care system, we borrow trouble.” 

Bonta’s bill wants to undo work requirements California extended to undocumented adults on state-funded Medi-Cal, after the Trump administration imposed stricter rules last year for those who receive federal benefits. 

People on Medicaid receiving housing or food assistance now need to prove they are working, looking for work, or enrolled in a job-training program in order to keep these benefits. Counties in charge of enrolling them will also have to request and review documentation every six months, instead of every year, to determine eligibility. This change didn’t apply to state-funded programs that cover all eligible immigrants, but the California Health Care Services, the state’s health agency, chose to include this population. 

“California should not be in the business of making it easier to kick people off of coverage,” said Bonta. 

Advocates say some undocumented immigrants won’t be able to provide documentation to prove their employment status, especially those who are paid in cash or work under the table. They also say research shows work requirements aren’t effective and, for immigrant communities, it only adds an extra layer to language, transportation, and even economic barriers during Medi-Cal renewals. 

“This will just result in many people losing healthcare coverage and not being able to re-enroll”, Cary Sanders, senior policy director of the Oakland-based California Pan Ethnic Health Network, told me. “Why would we then choose to apply it to even more Californians when we already know that we don’t have to?”

A provision in Bonta’s proposed legislation would also make it easier for people to keep their coverage by allowing applicants to renew Medi-Cal by phone, email, in person, or any other electronic means. 

There’s an additional piece in the puzzle that remains uncertain. Will California backfill funding for 200,000 refugees, asylees, and immigrant domestic violence and human trafficking survivors who used to qualify for federally-funded health care coverage? 

Newsom, who will likely run for president, didn’t include any funding for this group of immigrants when he announced his budget proposal in January, disappointing advocates who say he is backpedalling from a decades-long commitment to provide medical care for people living in the country for humanitarian reasons. 

“This means people suffering traumatic mental and physical effects of torture and sexual trafficking will be ripped away from their counselors and their doctors,” said Sanders. “The legislature and the governor need to stop harming the most vulnerable and instead propose real revenue solutions.”

It remains to be seen whether this legislature passes the bills, or if Newsom funds health care for lawfully present immigrants. Bonta and Durazo’s bills have first hearings scheduled for next month, but we won’t know until May whether the governor approves additional funding. I will be closely following any related developments. 

Thank you for reading. That’s all for now. If you have any tips or story ideas, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at vsanchez@eltimpano.org. You can also contact me by phone or on Signal at 510-919-8593.

Thank you, see you next week.

Ear to the Ground

Hi, I’m Vanessa Flores, El Tímpano’s community reporter. Our text messaging (SMS) service reaches more than 6,500 Spanish-speaking immigrants across the Bay Area. Two weeks ago, we asked our subscribers whether California’s freeze on new Medi-Cal enrollments for undocumented adults over 20 had impacted them. While many reported successfully renewing their coverage before the freeze, others expressed worry about their pending renewals. It also surfaced ongoing questions about eligibility requirements and what help is available if someone can’t get coverage or if it is not approved. Here are a few of the responses we received:

I renewed my Medi-Cal, but they haven’t confirmed yet whether my coverage will be terminated.

—Oakland resident

I was denied Medi-Cal coverage because, according to them, our income is too high—and it’s just my husband and me in our family. They don’t take into account that we have to pay rent, water, electricity, and waste collection.

—Oakland resident

I renewed it in December. What worries me is that by June, we won’t have dental coverage anymore.

—Oakland resident

I receive Medi-Cal, and they haven’t taken it away from me; I don’t know if they will.

—Oakley resident

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