Poll: More Californians favor giving immigrants health care
Californians have become more open during the pandemic to the idea of providing health care to undocumented immigrants, according to a new Public Policy Institute of California survey that is giving hope to backers of a singlepayer health system.
Two in three likely voters say they support providing health care for undocumented immigrants, according to the nonpartisan survey — a jump from the 54% who felt that way in 2015, the last time the institute asked the question.
And just over half of respondents said they would rather pay higher taxes and get more government services than pay lower taxes and get less.
“The pandemic has a lot to do with changing attitudes about who should have health coverage and what to do about people who don’t have health coverage,” pollster Mark Baldassare said.
He said “it’s possible” that more Californians are warming to a single payer system after the devastation they’ve seen COVID19 wreak. A nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation study in May 2020 estimated that 27 million Americans could lose their employerbased health insurance during the pandemic.
Several measures are before the Legislature concern
ing health insurance, but they face determined opposition from the health care industry. The health care sector donated $9.2 million to state legislative races in California in 201920, trailing only labor and the financial/real estate industries, according to the nonpartisan National Institute on Money in State Politics.
Democratic Assembly Members David Chiu of San Francisco and Joaquin Arambula of Fresno are carrying a measure that would expand MediCal coverage of lowincome adults, regardless of their citizenship status. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office estimated that covering the approximately 1 million eligible recipients would cost $2.6 billion a year. Over the past four years, California has expanded MediCal coverage to include lowincome young people under 26 regardless of their citizenship status.
Assembly Member Ash Kalra, DSan Jose, who introduced a single payer bill in the Legislature in February, said Wednesday that while he doesn’t want “to jump to conclusions based on these oneoff questions, I am hopeful of the message they’re sending.”
The message, Kalra said, is one of support for frontline workers, many of whom don’t have health care. Nearly 3 million Californians lack health insurance.
“It tells us that Californians ... understand who has been really sacrificing in terms of who doesn’t have health care. And they’re ready for a change,” Kalra said. “I’m hoping that it is moving us toward a single payer plan.”
Such plans have a single government agency pay most or all health care costs, though patients may still have a choice of where to be treated. Critics of single payer plans, including President Biden, often point to staggering costs. State analysts are still estimating how much Kalra’s plan might cost.
The poll’s results are a signal that Californians now see that “health care is a system, not a commodity,” said Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California and a member of the Healthy California for All Commission, a 17person panel that is looking into ways to expand health coverage.
“We’ve had a year of monitoring the number of ICU beds, of how many ventilators are available,” Wright said. “There’s a recognition now that this is a health care system. And if people are not getting the health care that they need, it affects all of us.”
Abdul ElSayed, a singlepayer supporter who was on a task force of Biden and Bernie Sanders backers that forged a joint health care campaign position last year, told The Chronicle’s “It’s All Political” podcast that the pandemic put the nation’s health care system through “the worst possible stress test.”
“I think Medicare for All is the right approach to addressing the structural deficit at the heart of the failures of our health care system over the past 15 months,” said ElSayed, a former Detroit health commissioner. “And I think Americans are looking at it with a new lens.”
The Public Policy Institute of California conducted its poll of 1,174 likely voters conducted March 1423, in English and Spanish, via land lines and cell phones. The margin of error is 3.9 percentage points.
“If people are not getting the health care that they need, it affects all of us.”
Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California