California Democrats Push Free Healthcare for Illegal Immigrants
California’s governor debate turned into a very clear fight over one of the state’s most costly political headaches. Every Democrat asked this week said they supported healthcare coverage for illegal immigrants, even as the candidates spent part of the debate warning that California’s system is already stretched thin.
That tension was hard to miss. On one side, the candidates talked about exploding costs, strained families, and a budget under pressure. On the other, they defended a policy that gives more coverage to people who entered the country illegally.
Tom Steyer pushed back hard when asked about the issue. “We had a broken immigration system, and now you want to victimize the people who are working here and making the state run,” he said.
Katie Porter was asked directly about the cost of giving illegal immigrants free coverage. Her answer focused on public health and emergency room strain. “We can’t afford to have people who are sick, who are making the rest of us sick,” Porter said before Republican Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco cut in with, “They shouldn’t be here,” prompting a brief pause.
Porter kept going, saying, “When anyone doesn’t have care, the rest of us are at risk when people don’t get vaccinations,” and adding, “When they don’t go to the doctor, they wind up in the emergency room. They cause longer lines for the rest of us. They make our health care system — they push it to the brink.”
Xavier Becerra, the former Biden administration Health and Human Services Secretary, also backed the policy. “Immigrants, whether documented or not, work hard. They pay taxes, and sometimes they get injured on the job or their children get sick,” he said. He argued that keeping people out of basic care only drives them into the most expensive part of the system. “It would be foolish to tell a family that they don’t have access to the pediatrician or the family doc or not be able to use the community health center where it wouldn’t cost us so much to give them help access to good health care,” Becerra said.
“Instead, what will happen is that child will get so ill that they will have to take that child to the hospital. And what door do they enter? The most expensive door in the health care system? The emergency room door. Why do that and spend so much money when you can do it up front?”
The Republican candidates took a far different line. Steve Hilton said, “The actual way we deal with healthcare in this state is to at least stop spending $20 billion a year on free healthcare for illegal immigrants who shouldn’t even be in the country in the first place.” Bianco said, “When are we going to draw the line at any other crime? It’s illegal. They enter the country illegally, we’re not going to incentivize them to come here to take more of the resources that regular Californians aren’t getting,”
The debate also showed a bigger divide inside the Democratic field. Steyer said he supports single payer “absolutely,” while Becerra said California should “try to get to a Medicare for all program.” Porter pressed him to say whether he supported “California having its own state-run single-payer system.”
Even so, some of the Democrats admitted the math is ugly. Steyer said healthcare is “eating up our budget” and “eating up every single family,” while Villaraigosa warned that a state-run single-payer plan could carry a roughly $500 billion price tag and would still need federal approval. “It’s pie in the sky,” he said.
Matt Mahan and Antonio Villaraigosa were not directly asked during the debate whether they supported healthcare coverage for illegal immigrants, and they did not clearly lay out a position on the issue elsewhere in the event.
For California voters, the choice is becoming harder to ignore. Democrats keep pushing more spending and bigger government. Republicans are warning that taxpayers are already getting squeezed, and that the state cannot keep promising more free benefits while families and businesses are left holding the bag.