California will become the first state in the nation to offer taxpayer-funded health insurance to all of its 4.4 million illegal aliens and their United States-born children, after years of lobbying from special interests.
This week, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced a budget agreement with the sanctuary state’s Democrat-controlled legislature which includes offering health insurance, subsidized by California’s taxpayers, to all illegal aliens.
“With these new investments, California will become the first state to achieve universal access to health care coverage,” Newsom said in a statement.
Offering taxpayer-funded health insurance to its entire illegal alien population, the largest in the nation, is expected to cost California’s taxpayers about $2.4 billion annually. The plan is scheduled to begin in 2024.
For years, Newsom and elected Democrats have sought to secure taxpayer-funded health insurance for illegal aliens. Last year, for instance, state officials approved a plan that began offering health benefits to elderly illegal aliens.
Likewise, in 2019, California became the first state in the nation to open its taxpayer-funded health benefits to illegal aliens up to 26 years old.
Americans nationwide are already forced to subsidize about $18.5 billion of yearly medical costs for illegal aliens living in the United States, according to estimates by Chris Conover, formerly of the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research at Duke University.
When U.S. voters were polled by CNN on the issue in July 2019, nearly six in ten, including 63 percent of swing voters and 61 percent of self-described “moderates,” said they were opposed to forcing taxpayers to provide free health benefits to illegal aliens.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.