via Mike Shedlock:
The welfare state is booming, especially in the sanctuary states. In three states, Government jobs plus Social Assistance/Health Care is over 100% of year-over-year job creation.
What’s driving American job growth? In progressive states, it’s government, social assistance and healthcare.
The Wall Street Journal reports The Welfare-Industrial Complex Is Booming
The tens of thousands of migrants pouring into big cities need to be tended to. So do the hundreds of thousands of drug-addled and mentally ill homeless living on the streets. Progressive government doesn’t do anything on the cheap. America’s welfare state has thus become a proverbial Big Dig, and it keeps getting bigger.
New York City is spending $394 a day—or $143,810 a year—to house and feed each migrant, many in formerly posh hotels. Mayor Eric Adams grouses about the flood of migrants, but what does he expect when the city makes itself a welfare magnet?
Meantime, the homeless population continues to swell, even as government shovels more money into housing subsidies—nearly $43 billion in the Democrats’ March 2021 Covid bill alone. The number of homeless shot up 85,389 between 2019 and 2023, with California and New York combined accounting for about half the increase, according to a recent federal government report.
A 2017 report from Orange County United Way, a nonprofit in Irvine, Calif., estimated that each chronically homeless person living on the streets and in emergency shelters costs the public $85,631 a year, largely owing to high healthcare expenses from repeat trips to the emergency room. The $837,000 Los Angeles is spending to build a single housing unit for the homeless almost appears frugal by comparison.
Aside from two years of runaway inflation, one way to explain Americans’ malaise is that they sense most new jobs aren’t making them or most people they know better off. The main beneficiaries are workers in the welfare-industrial complex.
Check out Medicaid in California
The California Health Care Foundation explains Medi-Cal Financing and Spending
In fiscal year (FY) 2021–22, California’s Medicaid program, Medi-Cal, spent $121.9 billion to provide a wide range of core health benefits to nearly 15 million Californians with low incomes.
Free Heath Care to Illegal Immigrants
News Medical reports States expand health coverage for immigrants as GOP hits Biden over border crossings
Eleven states and Washington, D.C., together provide full health insurance coverage to more than 1 million low-income immigrants regardless of their legal status, according to state data compiled by KFF Health News. Most aren’t authorized to live in the U.S., state officials say.
Enrollment in these programs could nearly double by 2025 as at least seven states initiate or expand coverage. In January, Republican-controlled Utah will start covering children regardless of immigration status, while New York and California will widen eligibility to cover more adults.
There are more than 10 million people living in the U.S. without authorization, according to estimates by the Pew Research Center. Immigrant advocates and academic experts point to two factors behind state leaders’ rising interest in providing health care to this population.
States have also expanded coverage in response to pleas from hospitals, lawmakers say, to reduce the financial burden of treating uninsured patients.
California was the first state to begin covering immigrants regardless of their legal status, starting with children in 2016.
Health Care Benefits to Illegal Immigrants
Your health cares costs are increasing to cover illegal immigrants. And it will only accelerate from here. Offering free health care for kids will soon expand to adults.
The alternative is emergency room care which is more expensive.
Money, Money, Money
Let me ask again, Sanctuary Cities Seek More Money for Migrants, But is Money the Problem?
Add free housing and free health care for illegal immigrants to the list of major forces increasing inflation.
And these numbers are sure to be a major election issue, perhaps the deciding issue. For discussion of how the Senate is shaping up, please see Good News, Republicans Have a Great Chance to Take the Senate in 2024