CA State Senate Passes Taxpayer-Funded Health Insurance for Illegal Aliens

The Los Angeles Times released the latest update on State Senator Ricardo Lara's (D-Bell Gardens) abusive, inappropriate agenda to expand taxpayer-funded health insurance to illegal aliens.

 

The liberal paper soft-pedals this gross affront to state sovereignty and national integrity with the following title:

State Senate OKs health coverage for many immigrants here illegally

 

For "many immigrants" here illegally? They are illegal aliens. "Immigrant" implies legal status. California readers and leaders need to take back this discussion.

The state Senate on Tuesday approved a hotly debated measure that would allow many immigrants in the country illegally to sign up for special healthcare programs that would offer the same benefits as Medi-Cal.

State Senator Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens)

This kind of immoral, illegal insanity is becoming the norm in California.

Worse yet, state senate Republicans feel compelled to tip-toe around this issue, for fear of shaming or defaming themselves in front of the media and the pro-amnesty groups in Sacramento.

The United States of America is a nation of laws, not interest groups, not of men, nor of politicians looking to shore up their base and protect their political prospects at the expense of the Constitution, both state and federal.

This bill is an egregious slap in the face to all working Americans, particularly legal residents who immigrated here -- that means they came legally.

 

The action comes just days after lawmakers significantly scaled back the plan, which originally would have offered state-subsidized Medi-Cal to people in the country without authorization.
State Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) said his proposal provides “what we can realistically achieve now” for the estimated 2 million people in the state illegally.

 

"What we can realistically achieve. . " Who is "We", Senator Lara? The people who pay the taxes, who try to grow and thrive, whether in a job or a business, the local civic leaders balancing their budgets and deciding how to spend their local dollars -- they are the ones who will have to pay for this exaggerated expansion of government funding into statewide insurance.

 

Guess what? They can't afford it. The only realistic proposal would be to kill this bill immediately.

 

The bill would allow up to 240,000 minors to sign up for Medi-Cal and allow some low-income adults to sign up for a separate program that provides the same services. Higher-income people would be able to buy non-subsidized coverage through Covered California if the federal government provides permission for them to do so.

Covered California is getting uncovered as unsustainable and ineffective, with many respondents declaring that health insurance is still too expensive. Pushing more people onto the healthcare-welfare rolls will not drive down costs, whether for insurance or for emergency room payments.

As the son of parents who were immigrants formerly in the country illegally, Lara said many people spend long hours in emergency rooms waiting for treatment.

So what? The reason why health care is getting harder to access is precisely because individuals are not shouldering the individual costs or taking into account the demands with routine check-ups. Furthermore, Obamacare has only enriched the well-connected in the insurance and hospital industries, at the far and growing expense of everyone else -- everyone else who lives in the state of California legally.

“Many often forgo medical care because of the fear of medical debt,” Lara said in support of SB 4.
The vote was 28-11, with most but not all Republicans opposed to the legislation, which next goes to the Assembly for consideration.

 

Millions of California residents have forgone medical care because of medical debt, too. Do they count? Do they matter to Senator Lara?  Instead of looking for more wasteful ways to spend other people's money, why hasn't Lara taken the initiative to protect his working-class constituents from the preying city leaders who robbed Bell blind four years ago? Where is the investment in public integrity?

 

Sen. Jeff Stone (R-Murrieta) said the legislation only makes worse a shortage of physicians to treat patients on Medi-Cal. “This bill would only add hundreds of thousands of patients to the rolls with no one to care for them,” Stone said.

 

Thank you, Senator Stone, one voice for fiscal and moral sanity in the state legislature. Let us hope that more legislators feel the same way and vote down this unthinking, unconscionable proposal.

 

However, Sen. Andy Vidak (R-Hanford) said he supported the bill, saying “the taxpayers are already paying high healthcare costs for undocumented when they show up in our emergency rooms.”

Senator Vidak? How could he do this? Has his victory in the Central Valley turned into a double-edged sword for California residents, Republicans in particular? One active conservative has determined that Vidak must face a primary challenge. The state of California is going nowhere good without a firm grip on principled immigration policy: the answer to the world's ills will never be an open border. Even liberal GOP gubernatorial candidate Neel Kashkari understood that. Califonia needs a secure border, welfare reform, and E-Verify. Anyone who plays the "Deport Grandma" card can simply respond: "My grandma came here legally. Why won't you make it easier for their grandmas to come here legally, too?"

If Republicans feel that they have to pander with these big government give-a-ways just to stay relevant in the state, then the whole California Republican Party should close up and move to Nevada or Arizona.