California expects to spend 28 times more on health benefits for illegal aliens than on state police in the 2025-2026 budget period.
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s final budget allocates $348 million to law enforcement while the state’s own budget experts in an October report estimate the tab for giving full health benefits for illegal aliens amounts to $10 billion. The new report by the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) reveals a 35% higher figure than the $7.4 billion cost Newsom estimated in his January 2025 budget proposal.
California’s joint state-federal Medicaid program, Medi-Cal, provides comprehensive coverage for doctor’s visits, medications, and dental and vision care for 1.7 million illegal aliens, who represent 11% of the program’s enrollees, according to the LAO report. Illegal immigrants’ health benefits will consume a fourth of the Medi-Cal money flowing from state coffers.
“The Governor is committed to effective crime reduction, which is why California’s crime rate has been rapidly declining in recent years,” said Diana Crofts-Pelayo, a spokesperson for Newsom, said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Like other states, law enforcement budgets in California are funded primarily through local funding,” Crofts-Pelayo added, pointing to a February 2025 report on city and county spending on police.
But amid a battle in Congress over health spending for illegal immigrants and in the courts over President Donald Trump’s National Guard deployments to Los Angeles and other cities to protect Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) facilities amid a surge in threats, the statistic provides another illustration of the blue state’s priorities.
Newsom, a frequent Trump critic who has hinted at 2028 presidential aspirations, has championed the policy, making California the first state to provide all immigrants meeting income requirements access to Medicaid in 2022. Newsom touted the move as achieving “universal access to health coverage” — even as he backed off promises of a completely state-subsidized single-payer model.
He recently touted “universal health care” as among his accomplishments in an October CNN interview.
– $11 insulin
– $20 minimum wage for fast food workers
– $25 minimum wage for healthcare workers
– Universal Pre-K
– Free school meals
– 600,000 new apprenticeship programs
– Largest civil service program in the country
– Universal healthcare
– Improved test scores across the… pic.twitter.com/oqUPxD9U1v— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) October 28, 2025
Newsom also criticized Trump’s National Guard deployments to protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities in an Oct. 20 amicus brief dated as an affront to “states’ sovereign rights to handle any public safety matters,” even as public safety received a short shrift under Newsom compared to health benefits for illegal aliens.
Expansions of the policy to include illegal aliens of any age on Medi-Cal drove spending on the program skyward to more than double the initial estimates, LAO’s report says.
While on paper the state must only use its own funds for illegal immigrants, in practice, California obtains federal Medicaid dollars for its pet priorities through complex accounting.
California exploited a loophole in Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) rules to obtain extra Medicaid matching dollars, Niklas Kleinworth, a policy analyst at Paragon Health Institute, told the DCNF. Even former President Joe Biden’s CMS said California’s policy was not in keeping with “the intended design” of their rules, per Paragon, a non-partisan policy research institute founded by Brian Blase, former economic policy advisor to Trump.
“What they did was technically legal, so you can’t call it defrauding the government, but it really was an abuse of the intent of the policy,” Kleinworth told the DCNF. “They got very crafty.”
Trump’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill signed into law in July scaled back states’ ability to obtain Medicaid dollars this way, leaving California scrambling for new revenue streams, the LAO report shows. Newsom also negotiated with legislative Democrats throughout the final two quarters of the 2024-2025 budget period on changes to stop the bleeding.
California Democrats finalized their plans in June: In January 2026 the state will implement a freeze on all illegal adult enrollment, with the revocation of dental coverage and a reduction in certain clinic payments to follow.
In July 2027, the state will introduce a $30 monthly premium — a cost 96% lower than the average $650 that Californians with employer-sponsored plans pay.
The LAO report proposes a tax on the uninsured of $900 or more to make up the shortfall while maintaining programs like the Medicaid expansion for illegal immigrants.
Plans with premiums that cheap are “unicorn policies” for most Americans, Kleinworth told the DCNF.
“The only way a $30 premium exists is through the heavily subsidized Obamacare plans,” said Kleinworth.
In order to qualify for such a plan, an American household could earn no more than 150% of the poverty level, or $23,475 per year for a single adult, far less than the state’s $76,190 median income.
Newsom dismissed criticism of California policy priorities as the product of “California derangement syndrome” in an October Bloomberg interview.
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