California counties cut healthcare to illegal immigrants

"This is a way for us to get through what I think is a horrible year for healthcare in California," said William Walker, director of Contra Costa Health Services.

Walker said the national ambivalence on immigration policy means that illegal immigrants are living here but without federal or state funding to provide essential medical services to them. Walker, who began his medical career treating undocumented farmworkers, said that deciding to cut their services was difficult.

"This is the community of people we have all relied upon for decades, providing work not only in construction but in service and child care," he said. "We all live and work here together."

Trend could spread

As the recession continues, property tax revenue decreases and the number of newly uninsured patients increases, other county health departments in California and the nation may make similar changes, said Robert Pestronk, executive director of the National Assn. of County and City Health Officials.

"Communities are having to make excruciating decisions about the services they fund," he said.

But Pestronk said that shifting costs isn't the answer.

"This is a balloon that just expands," he said. "If you squeeze it in one place, it's just going to expand somewhere else."

John Schunhoff, Los Angeles County's interim health services department director, said there is no plan to eliminate health services to the county's illegal residents, despite significant projected deficits and concern about further cuts in state funding.

Eliminating illegal immigrants from health services may enable counties to balance their budgets this year but won't solve the problem in the long term, said David Hayes-Bautista, professor of medicine and director of UCLA's Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture.

"We are mortgaging the future to scrape through the present," he said.