One of those gift with purchase aspects to the Supreme Court decision or non-decision.
Immigrants living in the U.S. without authorization can’t enroll in Obamacare and make up a large portion of those who remain uninsured in California. But an unusual state policy allows those granted temporary relief from deportation to sign up for Medi-Cal, the state’s low-income health program.
If the court had upheld the deferred action programs, more than half a million unauthorized immigrants in California could have become eligible for state-funded health insurance, according to UC Berkeley and UCLA researchers.
Tragically now that won't work out. Which may actually keep ObamaCare alive for a little bit longer before the spiral really kicks in. So it's one of those good news-bad news deals.
The deadlock also stalls what would have been a boon to efforts in California to provide health insurance to those here illegally.
It's of course taken for granted that California should be providing health insurance to illegal aliens.
If the program had gone forward, approximately 621,000 people – or 54% of the 1.15 million adults in the state who would have been eligible for deferred action – could have qualified for Medi-Cal based on their incomes, according to an analysis by researchers from the UC Berkeley Labor Center and the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.
UC Berkeley researcher Miranda Dietz said the deferred action programs could have been “a really big deal for Californians.”
By Californians, she means Undocumented Democrats.
Without these programs, researchers estimate that as many as 1.5 million of the 2.67 million immigrants in the state illegally could remain uninsured by 2019 – roughly half of California's total uninsured population.
So either way Californians and Americans will be paying for their health care.