Minnesota Passes Bill Barring Illegal Migrants from State Health Care Program

The Minnesota state legislature has passed a bill that bars illegal aliens from participating in the state’s tax-supported public health care program.
The measure, now headed to the desk of left-wing Gov. Tim Walz, was filed by state Republicans who insisted that the state simply can’t afford to continue giving free healthcare to tens of thousands of illegal aliens. Walz is expected to sign the bill into law, CBS News reported.
The bill bans undocumented migrants from participating in the state’s MinnesotaCare program.
Republican state Rep. Harry Niska pointed out that Minnesota is not the only blue state finding it impossible to continue to hand out such massive freebies to illegals.
“If California and Illinois can’t make the numbers work, what makes us think Minnesota can? The question before us is simple: Will we continue down a path of fiscal recklessness or will we act now to protect Minnesota taxpayers?” Rep. Niska said.
MinnesotaCare saw more than 20,000 illegals join the program when it launched, and its costs quickly totaled $4 million. The cost for the program was set to balloon to $1.3 billion by 2027.
The rollback became the chief measure for Republicans as part of the legislature’s budget negotiations to avoid a government shutdown. GOP lawmakers voted for it as a block in both the House and the Senate. In the Senate, Erin Murphy, the majority leader of the Democratic-Farmer Labor Party (DFL, the state’s Democrat Party), was compelled to vote along with the Republicans because she promised to do so in order to get the rest of the budget passed.
Even while voting in favor of the healthcare roll back, Sen. Murphy pledged to reimplement the freebie program at some later date.
“We will regain coverage for people because we are compassionate people, and that’s what we do in Minnesota. I made an agreement. I gave my word. I will vote for this and it’s among the most painful votes I’ve ever taken,” Murphy said.
The party split in the Minnesota state house is even closer than in Washington D.C. Currently, the House is even with 67 Republicans to 67 DFL members, while the Senate currently has only a one-seat majority for the DFL with 34 to the GOP’s 33.
Minnesota is not the only blue state finding that its massive freebies to illegals immediately became unsustainable as soon as the measures were implemented.
The state of Illinois also found its costs immediately spiraling hundreds of millions of dollars past the costs lawmakers assumed the program would cost.
The costs spiraled out of control so quickly that even radical left-wing Gov. JB Pritzker, who was thrilled with the program when he signed it onto law, said that it had to be rolled back.
Colorado has also been socked with cost overruns and higher numbers of those enrolling than expected.
In March, reports revealed that costs to taxpayers for the Centennial State’s healthcare for illegals program had spiked more than 600 percent after the latest wave of enrollees.
The program dubbed Cover All Coloradans, put into effect in 2022, was estimated to cost Coloradans about $2 million. But only a few years later, that cost had soared to $16 million and is expected to double to $32 million by next year, Axios reported.
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