U.S. move to restrict immigrants' healthcare access would hit California's economy, study says

The L.A. Times reports:

Rules that could give immigrants reason to avoid enrolling in health safety-net programs would deliver a blow to California’s economy, costing the state thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in economic output, a new study concluded.

Under the rules proposed by the U.S. Homeland Security Department, immigrants who enroll themselves or their children in Medicaid — the half-century-old government health insurance program for the poor —, nutrition assistance programs such as CalFresh or federal housing assistance could jeopardize their chances of getting green cards.

The rules would likely cost the California economy more than 17,000 jobs and $2.8 billion in lost economic output if just 35 percent of the Californians in immigrant families currently making use of these programs disenroll, said the study, which was done by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, UC Berkeley Labor Center and a nonprofit group, California Food Policy Advocates. At that rate of disenrollment, the study said 6,200 of those lost jobs and $992 million of that lost output would be in the Los Angeles area.

California’s health care industry, food-related industries, as well as real estate would be hardest hit by the resulting job losses, authors of the study said. Forty-seven percent of jobs lost would be in health care,10 percent would be food-related, and 4 percent of total jobs expected to be eliminated would be in real estate.

Did you think they were all net-taxpayers ?