New America Media

Anthony Wright, one of California’s leading proponents of health care access, says the window is open in the coming year for an historic expansion of health care to all of the state’s residents.

The reason, he says, is not only Obama’s executive action on immigration, which puts over 1.5 million Californians within reach of temporary legal status – and therefore in reach of Medi-Cal coverage if they meet the income requirements. There’s also growing support in the state legislature for the ‘Health For All’ bill (SB 4) introduced by Senator Ricardo Lara (D-Los Angeles), which would expand health care access to the state’s undocumented population.

One key indicator will come as early as the second week of January, when Governor Brown is expected to comment on the issue when he releases his budget.

“We have an opportunity to win – not in the far future, but in the next year – a major expansion of [health] coverage,” says Wright, the executive director of Health Access California, a statewide health care advocacy organization.

“Because of the president’s immigration action, because of the new leadership in the state legislature, we have a window to do something on the issue of covering everybody,” he says – putting California ahead of the rest of the country in broad access to health care.

“We have about a quarter of the country’s undocumented population in our state alone, and half of them could stand to benefit from [the executive action],” said Sally Kinoshita, the deputy director of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, speaking on a panel with Wright to a group of ethnic media journalists in San Francisco.

Even though the undocumented are still excluded from federally funded health care, under current state policy in California, the individuals with temporary legal status would qualify for state-funded Medi-Cal if they meet the program’s income requirements.

One thing could throw a wrench into the gears, though – the governor’s fiscal conservatism. The Brown administration could very well hit the brakes on extending coverage to people who benefit from the executive action, giving them temporary legal status.

“The president did not expand health coverage nationally, but the implication of his actions is that California now has a broader, more inclusive Medicaid program for hundreds of thousands more folks. This is the view of the county welfare directors, numerous immigration attorneys, [virtually] everybody who’s looked at this issue,” says Wright. “The one person who has not commented on this is Governor Brown.”

The governor is expected to comment sometime around January 8, according to Wright.

“Let me be clear – he would have to proactively undo [existing] policy in order for this not to go forward,” says Wright. “This is the policy as we understand it, but that will be either officially reinforced or he will make an announcement about what his recommendation is. We hope that he will continue California’s long history and our current policy of including deferred action immigrants as eligible for Medi-Cal coverage.”

If the governor allows the current policy to remain in place, it could be a saving grace for the family of Akiko Aspillaga, 25, a community organizer with ASPIRE (Asian Students Promoting Immigrant Rights through Education) who spoke alongside Wright and Kinoshita. Akiko’s mother is undocumented and has suffered from serious health problems for years.

Because Aspillaga’s brother has a green card, her mother will be able to apply for Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA), a new temporary legal status created by the executive action. DAPA status is open to undocumented parents whose children are either citizens or legal permanent residents, and who have been in the United States for over five years and have not committed certain crimes.

“I hope Governor Brown extends [Medi-Cal] to DAPA recipients,” says Aspillaga. “My mom is almost 65 and she hasn’t seen a doctor in a really long time.”

Should Health For All come to pass, it would benefit families like those of Bo (whose last name has been withheld at his request), another young person who spoke alongside Aspillaga. Bo came to the United States from South Korea with his family in 2003. Like Aspillaga, his parents suffer from chronic health problems. Unlike Aspillaga’s mother, they won’t qualify for DAPA, because neither Bo nor his sister are legal permanent residents.

“My sister and I were able to receive DACA and we will have the opportunity to have health care eventually,” he says. “But my parents won’t, and I’ll have to continue seeing them in pain.”

Health For All would change that, and 2015 could be the year that it happens.