During remarks on the House floor, Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA) tore into Gov. Gavin Newsom's (D-CA) Medi-Cal management, and programs to provide access to illegal immigrants.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Mr. Speaker, I rise today to inform folks throughout California and the entire country
00:07of one of the biggest scandals in our state's history, which is that Governor Gavin Newsom
00:13is literally bankrupting Medicaid in our state.
00:18He is driving it insolvent through a policy that exists nowhere else in the country, in
00:25no other state, a policy of offering free, comprehensive, universal Medicaid, or Medi-Cal
00:33as we call it, to the entire population of illegal immigrants in our state who meet the
00:40income threshold.
00:42No other state has done this, and in California it has been an absolute disaster.
00:49Initially, it was estimated that this unprecedented expansion would cost just a few billion dollars.
00:56But now, it turns out that it's going to cost $9.5 billion just for this year.
01:05And because of that enormous cost overrun, because of the resulting shortfall of some
01:12$6 billion, Governor Newsom has just taken out an emergency loan from the General Fund
01:20in order to cover payments, and on top of that, he has asked the legislature to appropriate
01:27even more money, billions more.
01:30So think about what this means over, let's say, the next 10 years.
01:34If the cost has grown from a few billion to $9.5 billion just in this first year, what
01:41can we expect year over year going forward?
01:44We are likely talking about hundreds of billions of dollars of money from California taxpayers
01:53that will be spent this next decade implementing a policy that exists nowhere else in the country
01:59to provide comprehensive care, comprehensive government-provided health care to those who
02:06are in our state illegally.
02:09And here's the worst thing.
02:11Not only is this fiscally unsustainable, but those are funds that could be going to
02:16shoring up Medicaid, Medi-Cal, and improving the system, improving access to care, improving
02:23the quality of care for our own legal residents.
02:29If you are a California citizen on Medicaid right now, the kind of coverage that you get,
02:35the kind of actual delivery of service that you get, likely is not that good.
02:41Doctors throughout the state simply will not take Medicaid patients because the reimbursement
02:46rate is so low.
02:49And so this policy of Governor Newsom and the supermajority in California is a conscious
02:55decision to put the entire solvency of our system at risk, to diminish access to care
03:02for our own residents, to in fact make it harder to get appointments because now there's
03:06a whole new population that's looking to get into the system, and doing so in a way that
03:12has no precedent anywhere else in the country.
03:17In fact, in many cases, it actually costs the state more money to provide Medicaid to
03:24a person who is in the state illegally because, number one, there's no federal funding for
03:30such enrollees, and so the state bears almost the entire cost, but even the overall cost
03:37for getting about who's paying for it can be higher because when you look at, for example,
03:42the rebates for prescription drugs that are available at the federal level because the
03:48federal government negotiates in bulk, that's not available for this population that's covered
03:52by state funds.
03:53So we're actually paying more than we would for our own citizens.
03:58Mr. Speaker, this outrageous policy simply cannot continue.
04:05I am calling on Governor Newsom and the state legislature to reverse it immediately.
04:12That should be the obvious next step when the system has gone insolvent to the extent
04:17that the governor is forced to take out an emergency loan.
04:22Here in Congress, I've introduced legislation that will preserve Medicaid benefits in California
04:28and across the country for only those who are legal residents of our country.
04:33I also think we have an opportunity to rein in what Newsom is doing through the reconciliation
04:38process, and I look forward to doing that in order to protect Medicaid for Californians.