Rapper 50 Cent blasted California for becoming the first state to offer health insurance to undocumented migrant adults.
On Friday, California announced that beginning Jan. 1, undocumented migrants between the ages of 26 and 49, would be eligible to qualify for Medi-Cal, the state’s version of Medicaid for people with low incomes, according to ABC News.
In a post on Instagram, 50 Cent expressed that he did not “understand this” and pointed out that U.S. veterans don’t even receive health insurance.
“I don’t understand this, this [is] going to cost 2.6 billion dollars for tax payers,” 50 Cent wrote. “They don’t even give veterans health insurance. @arimelber call my phone now, help me understand this s**t.”
View this post on Instagram
Before this move, undocumented migrants were not eligible to receive full benefits from health insurance, though they were provided with pregnancy and emergency medical care.
In 2015, former Gov. Jerry Brown (D-Calif.) signed bill Senate Bill 4 (SB 4) which extended health care coverage to undocumented children living in low-income households.
Under SB 4, beginning in May 2016, Medi-Cal coverage was expanded to roughly 170,000 undocumented children below the age of 19.
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) signed a law into effect in 2019. The law was an expansion of full-scope Medi-Cal health insurance for undocumented young adults between the ages of 19 to 25.
In 2022, an expansion of full-scope Medi-Cal for older undocumented adults 50 years or older was issued in order to allow them to receive a full range of health benefits.
The final expansion, which went into effect on Jan. 1, allowed roughly 700,000 undocumented adults to become eligible for health care benefits and has been estimated to cost $2.6 billion annually.