California Moves Toward Extending Obamacare to Illegal Immigrants
During a 2009 address to a joint session of Congress, President Barack Obama told the country that his plans for health care reform would not extend to people who are in the country illegally.
"You lie!" South Carolina Republican Rep. Joe Wilson notoriously shouted. Obama replied, "That's not true."
But only two years after the largest coverage provisions in the Affordable Care Act took effect, the country's most populous state has passed a bill that, in fact, seeks to extend Obamacare to people regardless of their immigration status.
The bill, now before California Gov. JerryBrown, aims to allow people who are in the country illegally to buy private health insurance on the state's exchange. Its author, Democratic state Sen. Ricardo Lara estimates that 390,000 such immigrants could receive health insurance, but officials who operate the exchange place that number closer to 50,000.
The legislation is being considered not only at a time when presidential candidates are campaigning in the Golden State but as those running have made health care and illegal immigration central platforms in their bids for the Oval Office, finding that their views on the topics have ignited voters' passions. To critics of the law, the bill signals another broken promise of Obamacare.
Obamacare explicitly bars people in the country illegally from its provisions, but a loophole called the "innovation waiver" allows for states to change portions of the law, as long as they make coverage available to more people and as long as the federal government doesn't have to pick up the tab, among other requirements. The bill, which would require that a request for a waiver be filed, first must be approved by the state legislature and the governor before the waiver can be considered by the federal government.
Though the California bill does not come with federal subsidies that make health insurance more affordable to low- and middle-income people, critics fear it's heading that way.
"This is a two-step process: Open the door to the exchanges, but when no one can afford to buy insurance you come back and add the subsidies," says Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform. "This is the first step in another misrepresentation of the Affordable Care Act. It was sold to the American people on the fact that you wouldn't have to subsidize health care for illegal immigrants."
Source--http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-06-03/california-moves-toward-extending-obamacare-to-illegal-immigrants
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