Over a hundred people crowded the halls of the state Capitol Tuesday to support two bills that would expand the age of eligibility for Connecticut’s state-funded Medicaid health care program, HUSKY Health.
Among them was Patricia Rosas, 55, of Hartford. She is a Mexican immigrant who has lived in Connecticut since the ‘90s.
In 2019, Rosas was diagnosed with kidney cancer. Speaking in Spanish, she said that doctors tried to turn her away.
“They didn’t want to help me,” she said. “They told me I had to go back to my country. Thank God that the community and many people helped me to get treatment. That’s why I’m here today, because they helped me. But if it were up to the people who make decisions, I wouldn’t be here because they didn’t want to help me.”
She came to the rally that the advocacy group HUSKY 4 Immigrants put together on Tuesday. She’s both a member of Hartford Deportation Defense and Manos Unidas de New Britain, a local organization that advocates for the undocumented and immigrant community.
Seeing so much support for the expansion left Rosas feeling empowered. It’s common practice for many Latino immigrants to go back to their countries to get affordable health care, she said, at the risk of their own health and financial situations. After her own struggle with getting treatment, she said an expansion of HUSKY Health eligibility is needed.
Dueling bills seek publicly-funded health care expansion
The two bills seek to expand HUSKY Health coverage to income-eligible people up to age 26 regardless of immigration status. One of the bills specifically looks to increase access to eligible immigrants without legal status to those over the age of 65.
The effort follows an expansion last summer that saw HUSKY eligibility increase to undocumented kids up to age 15. Going into this legislative session, Democratic lawmakers were considering further expanding the age cap to 18 years old.
State Rep. Jillian Gilchrest, a West Hartford Democrat, was one of the legislators who pushed for that expansion. At the rally Tuesday, Gilchrest reiterated her commitment to expanding access to health care for undocumented residents.
“My good co-chair and I, along with so many of our colleagues, have been working to expand access to health care for those who are undocumented in the state of Connecticut,” she said. “We are committed to continuing that work regardless of the pressures that we get from this federal government.”
The Trump administration moved to pause federal grants and loans starting Tuesday, which Connecticut elected officials said disconnected access to medicaid portals and other sources of federal funding for social services like Head Start child care. According to administration officials, the goal is to ensure that the use of federal funding complies with Trump’s recent executive orders that rolled back DEI, immigration, climate change initiatives.
Although a federal judge temporarily stayed the Trump administration’s funding freeze through Monday, ongoing court challenges could still affect budget plans this session. How exactly that’ll impact Connecticut is unclear, according to Speaker of the House Matt Ritter.
“There's a lot of uncertainty and we're going to have to work through a lot of stuff and see what Congress does in the next 90 days with the Medicaid program,” Ritter said.
Connecticut is one of nearly two dozen states suing to challenge the Trump funding freeze in court. Regardless, the implications of how a move like that could impact funding for programs like HUSKY Health and programs that benefit immigrants have both state Democrats and Republicans mulling over where funds should go as the legislative session ramps up.
State Republican leaders Vincent Candelora and Stephen Harding condemned the proposal in a statement on Wednesday morning, criticizing the costs.
"True courage would mean saying 'no' to illegal immigrants and their advocacy groups, or at the very least, being honest with legal residents about the costs of this proposal," they said. "Instead of safeguarding our state's modest fiscal controls, Democrats are pushing hundreds of millions in new spending to fund their progressive agenda."
Well over a half of Medicaid spending by states is financed by the federal government, with Connecticut receiving 63.4% of its Medicaid spending share in fiscal year 2023, according to KFF.
Connecticut’s Medicaid program experienced cost overruns in the hundreds of millions of dollars at the start of the current fiscal year. The Connecticut Mirror reported that the Department of Social Services (DSS) is tallying usage and cost for the program, which has had a much higher interest in enrollments than expected, according to the DSS. The total cost is expected to be out before Gov. Ned Lamont releases his budget in February.
This story has been updated to include statement from Connecticut GOP leadership and information about Medicaid spending. Michayla Savitt and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
