There are a few issues that shouldn't be controversial among Republicans, and one of them should be opposition to expanding government health insurance benefits to illegal aliens. We're the party of limited government, and the party that believes in the rule of law. So it was very surprising to see that when California Assemblyman Bill Essayli (R-Corona) introduced a bill that would end all state taxpayer funding for health care for illegal immigrants, only two of his colleagues publicly came out in support of the bill. And it was even more surprising that one Republican Assemblyman went so far as to write an opinion piece for the Sacramento Bee - a publication that regularly vilifies Republicans and published an op-ed that led to violence at a Turning Point USA event - titled "Why a Republican lawmaker supports offering healthcare to California’s undocumented immigrants" and bashing Essayli.
If you somehow missed the news about the state of California's dire financial situation, the state has a $68 billion budget deficit just for the upcoming fiscal year. According to the state's budget analysts, unless something changes with spending levels, that budget deficit will total more than $150 billion over the next four years. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that a new program that's projected to cost $4 billion a year to that budget shortfall, for a government welfare program benefitting people who shouldn't even be in the country in the first place, should be the first thing on the chopping block.
GOP Asm. Devon Mathis, though, who brags about his eight years on various committees in Sacramento, believes this Medi-Cal expansion is a good thing, and that anyone who disagrees with him clearly doesn't understand how the healthcare system works. His opinion piece is filled with rhetoric one would normally find in a piece from a Democrat. For example:
We all can agree that our current immigration policy is broken and that Congress needs to stop politicizing this issue as a means to score political points. We need a solid policy that addresses the disastrous crisis at our border while also providing a realistic solution for the millions of undocumented immigrants in this state who are forced to hide in the shadows.
However, until Congress gets its act together, we have no choice but to work within the system that we have.
We have no choice? Forty-nine other states don't provide free healthcare to illegal aliens (not "undocumented immigrants").
Mathis claims that the state is already paying for healthcare for illegal aliens because they utilize the state's emergency rooms and cannot be turned away due to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), and then the state is stuck with the bill if the patient doesn't pay. He claims that if all eligible illegal aliens are signed up for Medi-Cal they will get all of the preventive care they need and not use the emergency room as an urgent care/primary care facility. There are a few problems with that argument:
- For FY 2022, California spent $812,000,000 (excluding reimbursements from COVID dollars) on emergency room care for illegal aliens, far less than $4 billion a year
- Undocumented immigrants use of EMTALA-related services is often covered via emergency Medicaid
- Not all illegal aliens will be eligible for Medi-Cal - many make more than the income threshold allows - and those people will still show up at the emergency room for health care and might not pay
- Having Medi-Cal insurance and actually getting an appointment for preventive care are two different things; wait times for preventive care at Medi-Cal providers can be weeks or months already
- With the state's physician shortage, wait times for preventive care at Medi-Cal facilities aren't likely to decrease any time soon.
In addition, nothing is stopping the open-borders crowd from funding private clinics or health insurance for "undocumented immigrants." Imagine if the Open Borders Society or the Kellogg Foundation spent their money on that instead of lobbying for government to do so?
Mathis then makes the insane argument that expanding Medi-Cal to illegal aliens actually makes the state's healthcare system "more efficient and fiscally responsible" before slamming Essayli:
The best we can do in the State Legislature is to make our health-care system more efficient and fiscally responsible, which is exactly what expanding health-care eligibility to undocumented immigrants does. People aren’t taking the time to understand the mechanics or economics of how state and federal health-care law works. This confusion is only made worse by the unnecessarily combative and harmful rhetoric of those who choose to incite rage and anger against our friends and neighbors.
Instead, Mathis would like to incite rage and anger against those in his own party and insult them by assuming they don't understand how state and federal health-care law works. After his piece was published, Mathis took to Twitter to hurl middle-school level insults at Essayli:
Didn’t take you long #Noob
— Devon J. Mathis (@devonjmathis) January 5, 2024
Before you try to launch red meat 🥩
Do your homework 📚🤓
Looks like you’re just being a #HeadlineWhore
It’s clear you know nothing about how the healthcare system works.
I spent 8 years as the ranking member on BudgetSub1 Health&HumanServices
✌️ https://t.co/U81pRTofa8
Why would Mathis spend his time tearing down a colleague and opposing such a common-sense bill instead of fighting with every ounce of his being against the Democrat supermajority who are destroying the state? Essayli has a theory, published in his own Sunday op-ed in the Los Angeles Daily News:
We can only speculate, but as a former prosecutor I can draw reasonable inferences from the facts we know. Mathis is not seeking re-election, and apparently no longer feels compelled to represent the values of his district, 62.5% of which voted Republican in 2022. He announced he intends to pursue a career in consulting, AKA a lobbyist. Lobbying is a Sacramento game and yields a lucrative income stream. You get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to peddle power on behalf of special interests who have no regard for how Sacramento policies impact the average Californian. In other words, his sudden change of position and op-ed appears to be a signal to the Sacramento elites that he is ready for hire.
This case study reveals the deeply rotten core of legislating in the Golden State—elected officials pass destructive policies favoring special interests and, far-too-often, they are handsomely rewarded with sizable campaign contributions and cushy job offers after they leave office. The fact that a Republican is succumbing to this playbook is incredibly destructive to the brand of a party fighting to regain power in California.
Whether Mathis published his opinion piece and attacked Essayli as part of an effort to curry favor with the Sacramento lobbyists or not, I can't say. But his actions are similar to those of another Republican sellout, Chad Mayes, who authored a $20 billion PG&E bailout bill on his way out the door and is now a partner at Capitol Advocacy, a Sacramento lobbying firm. Mayes and Mathis were part of a very small group of Republicans who voted for cap-and-trade in 2017, allowing Democrats in purple districts to abstain and still have the bill passed, so it's not really surprising that Mathis is again acting like a Democrat.
Regardless of Mathis' reasoning, Essayli hit the bullseye with his conclusion that "a Republican is succumbing to this playbook is incredibly destructive to the brand of a party fighting to regain power in California," and we thank him for pointing out the Republicans who need to be removed from any seat at the table.
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