Washington is paying for medical treatment and health coverage for large numbers of illegal immigrants at the expense of other poor families who are U.S. citizens, a state lawmaker said Thursday.
The cost of that coverage also is $15 million higher than what Democrats predicted earlier this year when they passed a law to expand subsidized health care programs for children.
“This is a program that mostly benefits kids of illegal immigrant families,” state Sen. Joe Zarelli said of the state Children’s Health Insurance Program. The $45 million the state will spend to expand that program over the next two years could instead be used to provide health coverage for other poor families who are citizens, he said.
Zarelli, the top Republican on the Senate budget-writing committee, made the remarks Thursday at a meeting of the Caseload Forecast Council, a group of lawmakers and governor’s Cabinet members who learned the state will have to provide coverage to 10,000 more children at a cost of $15 million.
While the higher numbers came as a surprise, Gov. Chris Gregoire’s administration isn’t upset by them. The purpose of expanding the children’s health program is to provide coverage to as many poor children as possible, regardless of their citizenship, said Nick Lutes, the governor’s budget adviser on health-care issues.
“Kids are kids,” he said.
Moreover, the overall impact to state taxpayers will be $6 million, not $15 million, because the federal government is expected to provide more money for a variety of health programs, including emergency medical treatment for non-citizens, Lutes said.
Gregoire, a Democrat, asked the Legislature earlier this year to expand children’s health coverage. The overwhelming Democratic majorities in the state House and Senate accommodated her by passing a law and increasing funding in the state’s 2007-09 budget.
The new law allows a family of four with an annual income of as much as $62,000 to qualify for state-subsidized health coverage.
Zarelli, the senator from Ridgefield in Clark County, essentially was saying, “I told you so.” He predicted in March that the cost would be higher than what Democrats were saying when they passed the new law. Zarelli also complained that more than half of the 48,670 children that soon will be insured by the state will drop coverage they already have with private insurance companies.
“Most of the kids are, in fact, covered by a private plan, but we’re taking them off so we can put these kids on the public dole,” he said.
Democrats, including Gregoire, set a goal of providing access to health care for all children by 2010. They have said the cost will be offset by $30 million in savings from fewer emergency-room visits that the state otherwise would have to pay for.
An estimated 635,000 children under the age of 18 who come from low-income families will have access to coverage by mid-2009, according to Gregoire’s office. That includes children covered by Medicaid, the state’s Basic Health Plan and two other state-subsidized programs.
Sen. Darlene Fairley, D-Lake Forest Park, also was miffed that the Legislature passed the new law without knowing the full cost of the expanded health program.
“A bunch of children magically appeared,” she said sarcastically.
Roger Gantz, a policy adviser for the state Department of Social and Health Services, said the higher numbers came to light after the Legislature adjourned and officials were trying to figure out how to reach the children who became newly eligible for health coverage. State officials learned they already had on file many of the families whose children had earlier been denied coverage because their parents made too much money or because they were not citizens, Gantz said.
Until then, “we simply did not know that these children existed,” he said. Many of them are the brothers and sisters of children who already receive medical coverage from the state but who previously were denied coverage because their siblings are citizens, but they are not, Gantz said.
Joseph Turner: 253-597-8436
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