On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Story Is,” Democratic California gubernatorial candidate former HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra defended healthcare for illegal immigrants by saying that Republican candidate Steve Hilton “looks at them as people who don’t have documents. I look at them as hard workers.” And “If you’re working hard, I want you to have healthcare. I guess Steve Hilton doesn’t care if they work really hard. He looks at their status, and that’s about it.”
Host Elex Michaelson said that Hilton “says he wants to take the undocumented off of healthcare rolls. Why do you want to keep them on there, and how much is that going to cost the state?”
Becerra answered, “He looks at them as people who don’t have documents. I look at them as hard workers. I look at them as people like my parents. I am the son of immigrants. To me, I want you to build, help me build California. If you’re working hard, I want you to have healthcare. I guess Steve Hilton doesn’t care if they work really hard. He looks at their status, and that’s about it.”
Michaelson then said, “Well, he says that they broke the law. And he says that he immigrated here legally and that spending money to give somebody healthcare is incentivizing bad behavior.”
Becerra responded, “He doesn’t seem to mind that the price of food is a little lower because these are the folks that are picking the crops. He doesn’t seem to mind that the places that you can buy to live in are places that these folks built. He doesn’t seem to mind that they’re the folks that are taking care of probably one of his relatives, probably taking care of his yards. He seems to mind that they don’t have documents, but he doesn’t seem to mind that they do so much of the work in California.”
Becerra also commented on the cost issue by saying that “when you leave them out, they still will get healthcare, except they’ll enter through the most expensive doors in the healthcare system, the emergency room.”
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