The Californian project Health for All Older Adults, which will offer government subsidized service for over 65 undocumented people, is on its way to final approval, as announced today by the legislator Ricardo Lara, who proposed it.
The Health4All Elders bill, which would include the undocumented in the public medical service Medi-Cal, has already been approved by a Senate committee and has “enough support,” according to Lara, for legislative approval.
The funds for the proposal will be included in “the package that the representatives of the Senate, the House and the Office of the Governor will negotiate before June 15 – the day that the deadline expires – to approve the budget,” he said in information sent to Efe today the Office of Lara.
According to the legislator, his proposal is focused on immigrants older than 20 years “abandoned by the failure of our nation to deal with immigration reform.”
Thus, according to the Hispanic senator, the bill “invests in the older Californians who have lived here for decades, who have paid their share of taxes and who deserve dignity as they grow older.”
Therefore, the legislator is hopeful that the Senate will back his proposal, which responds, he said, “to each child who asks: what about my grandfather ?, what about my grandmother? They deserve to age with dignity and security, “said Lara.
The initiative – based on data from the Center for Immigration Studies – calculates that undocumented people over 65 without health coverage number between 15,000 and 36,000 and that most have lived in California for more than 10 years and have American children.
The California budget proposal includes $ 75 million for Medi-Cal in 2018 and 2019, and $ 150 million for each subsequent year.
Undocumented immigrants pay close to 3.2 billion dollars in local and state taxes, “much more than the estimated cost of health coverage.”
According to this law, undocumented people over 65 “are less than 1% of the estimated 2.6 million undocumented Californians.”
The project complements another initiative that the same legislator – the son of undocumented immigrants – presented this year by launching “Health for all.”
This law seeks to offer subsidized medical services for all undocumented persons in California with incomes up to 200% below the federal poverty level; for example, up to $ 50,200 per year for a family of four. efe
