EDITORIAL: Blue states find ‘free’ health care can get expensive

This will be unpleasant news to progressives, but handing out “free” stuff can get darned expensive. The budget dreamers in one-party California are the latest to be shocked — shocked! — that they can’t escape this ironclad law of economics.

Over the past decade, Democrats in Sacramento have expanded the state’s Medicaid eligibility rules to cover almost 38 percent of the state’s population, including those in the country illegally. The growth began in 2015 when California allowed the children of low-income illegal immigrants to qualify for the taxpayer-supported health care program. Then, last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill to cover adults 26-49 years old even if they lacked legal status.

Supporters argued that the move would save money in the long run by encouraging the poor to seek preventive care. But whether it accomplishes the latter, it’s a virtual lock that it will never achieve the former — that’s a certainty right up there with death and taxes.

Indeed, The Associated Press reports that California’s Medicaid program is hemorrhaging red ink. Turns out that “free” health care for illegal migrants is costing $2.7 billion more than anticipated, leaving a Medicaid budget hole of $6.7 billion. The Newsom administration, the wire service revealed, recently took out a $3.44 billion loan from the state’s general fund to cover the program’s costs for this month.

California Democrats are now pondering the unthinkable. They may have to tighten pandemic-era eligibility rules that remain in place, raise taxes, cut coverage or even embrace the radical notion that forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for the medical care of millions of illegal immigrants may not be the wisest public policy.

The Golden State’s experience isn’t unique. In Illinois — where Democrats and public-sector unions also dominate politics — the AP reports that Gov. J.B. Pritzker has proposed a $330 million cut to the state’s Medicaid program to deal with higher than expected costs. Illinois also has expanded coverage to include many state residents who are in the country illegally. New York similarly allows illegal residents on the Medicaid rolls. In January, Gov. Kathy Hochul called the skyrocketing trajectory of the program’s costs “unsustainable.”

None of these deep-blue-state governors has yet admitted that their misguided policies have helped create the fiscal bog from which they now struggle to extricate themselves. At least two of them — Govs. Newsom and Pritzker — have their eyes on the White House. Obviously they aren’t content with running their own states into the ground and seek to impose their fiscal illiteracy on the rest of the nation. Voters beware.