The bill authorizes emergency funds to keep California’s Medicaid program afloat as costs surge and criticism mounts over illegal immigrant coverage.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed emergency legislation that will close a $2.8 billion shortfall in the state’s Medicaid program, Medi-Cal, ensuring continued health care coverage through June for approximately 15 million low-income residents, including hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants.
Newsom signed
Assembly Bill 100 into law on April 14, according to a
statement from his office. The measure is part of a broader response to an estimated $6.2 billion budget gap in Medi-Cal, the state’s sprawling public health care program.
The shortfall followed California’s expansion of full-scope Medi-Cal benefits to all income-eligible adults in 2024, regardless of immigration status—a move hailed by progressives and
criticized by conservatives.
The Medi-Cal expansion—implemented in January 2024 under a 2022 law—made California the first state in the nation to offer free, comprehensive health care to all low-income adults regardless of immigration status. The state
initially projected that the policy would cost $2.7 billion annually and cover about 764,000 residents without lawful immigration status. Actual program costs have exceeded expectations, contributing to California’s budget crisis, according to state officials.
California state Rep. Carl DeMaio, a Republican, has called for an audit of Medi-Cal spending, saying that California cannot afford to provide free health care to illegal immigrants.
“This puts the health coverage for poor people, children, the neediest among us, at risk,” DiMaio told reporters, according to a
video that he shared on social media. “Why? Because we’ve given away the store to noncitizens. We’ve given illegal immigrants free health care at taxpayers’ expense.”
California’s Medi-Cal expansion for illegal immigrants costs about $8.4 billion from the state general fund annually, according to an exchange between DeMaio and a California Department of Finance official during a recent budget hearing.
Newsom’s administration has denied claims that the expansion alone caused the shortfall, pointing to a combination of factors, including rising drug costs and larger enrollment by older people. In March, the state Department of Finance
approved a $3.44 billion emergency loan from the general fund to temporarily cover Medi-Cal’s cost overruns. The $2.8 billion appropriation approved under AB 100 supplements the loan and unlocks federal matching funds to keep the program solvent through June.
Fiscal watchdogs and Republican lawmakers say the program is unsustainable without significant reform, and recent revelations out of Washington have intensified those concerns.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)
disclosed in an April 10 post on social media that 6,300 illegal immigrants paroled into the country since 2023—many flagged by the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center or with known criminal records—had been granted access to government benefits, including Medicaid.
“Under the Biden administration, it was routine for Border Patrol to admit aliens into the United States with no legal status and minimal screening,” DOGE wrote in the post. The agency reported that all 6,300 paroled individuals received Social Security numbers and that 905 of them collected Medicaid benefits totaling $276,000. Others received unemployment insurance, food stamps, federal student loans, and more than $750,000 in tax refunds during the 2024 tax season.
DOGE confirmed that all such paroles have now been terminated.
California state Senate Leader Brian Jones, a Republican, said in a March 17
post on social media platform X that the costs of Medi-Cal keep climbing, with “no end in sight.”
“Californians should not be forced to shoulder the burden of radical Democrats’ reckless financial mismanagement,” Jones wrote in the post.
Republican Assemblyman David Tangipa, of Fresno, echoed those concerns.
“Weaponization of altruism is destroying our state,” Tangipa wrote in a
post on X. “We cannot continue to put illegal immigrants above California citizens, it will bankrupt us.”
