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Fri, Nov

California's $6.5 Billion Dilemma: Prioritizing ‘FREE’ Immigrant Healthcare Over Homelessness Solutions

STATE WATCH

ALPERN AT LARGE - Just because the number of $6.5 billion is a coincidence, that it‘s the amount we’re paying now for “free” health care to pay for those who shouldn’t even be here, as well as the amount we’re very likely going to go into debt to in order to help house the homeless, is a number that should cause concern and outrage.

So isn’t Sacramento generous with our funds, prioritizing non-taxpayers over taxpayers in the most flagrant manner possible?

And yet there’s only a few small crumbs for those native-born Americans who are miserable, need mental health and drug abuse programs (to say nothing of physical health and job skills) with respect to a lousy Prop.1  $6.5 billion bond measure that our budget is supposed to already be addressing.

The presumption that WE are supposed to be the cruel, heartless jerks if we vote NO on Proposition 1, yet Sacramento skates off scot-free with their “heartfelt” offerings for the illegal immigrants in this state, who somehow deserve better access to health than those of us paying taxes for decades, is outrageous.

And you can be damned sure we’re going to be pilloried for being so “mean” to those that the state should have been paying for ever since that “bad man” Reagan let out the mentally ill in the 1980’s…despite the fact that—constitutional questions or not—California still blew off the homeless for years.

So…hooray! $6.5 billion a year to give all that health care to those who are now MORE important than our homeless! THAT won’t be a magnet for the rest of the nation’s “undocumented migrant” population, right?

And yet…and yet…and yet…the homeless crisis is so dire that Republicans and Democrats are working together (says the L.A. Times) to come up with Proposition 1 when our budget is taking a nosedive, to say nothing of depleting our “rainy day” fund!

I suppose it can now be said that EVERY DAY will be a “rainy day” in the Fool’s Golden State, regardless of the weather, because our budget cannot possibly handle this crazy prioritization of illegal immigrants over mentally-ill and suffering homeless…

…because the “rainy day” fund cannot possibly accommodate so much of the nation’s homeless, the mentally ill, and the illegal immigrant population now flooding California.

And somehow, some way, in some bizarre world scheme, these groups are expected to replace the terror-stricken armies of once-welcomed rich, poor, and middle-class taxpayers fleeing for their economic survival back to the United States of America that still exists outside this mishandled and misled “state”.

 

(Kenneth S. Alpern, M.D, is a dermatologist who has served in clinics in Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties, and is a proud husband and father. He was active for 20 years on the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC) as a Board Member focused on Planning and Transportation, and helped lead the grassroots efforts of the Expo Line as well as connecting LAX to MetroRail. His latest project is his fictional online book entitled The Unforgotten Tales of Middle-Earth, and can be reached at [email protected]. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Dr. Alpern.)