After a long legislative session of rallying and endorsing, Katherine Villeda felt displeased to see Connecticut lawmakers fail to expand the state-funded healthcare program, HUSKY Health, for more undocumented residents.
“I’m not surprised,” Villeda said. “It doesn’t take away from the disappointment, because I feel like we were at a really important juncture where I think the state could have decided to strengthen the HUSKY program and ensure that people who are currently on HUSKY… will be secured in their coverage.”
Villeda is the coalition director for HUSKY 4 Immigrants, a group that advocates for the undocumented community to have healthcare access. This legislative session, she was pushing for a bill that would have raised the age of eligibility for undocumented residents up to 26.
Currently, undocumented residents ages 15 and under are eligible to enroll in the HUSKY Health program, an extension that took effect last year.
Villeda said she finds it unacceptable that Connecticut is expanding coverage for undocumented residents incrementally with “arbitrary” cut offs like the current one.
“Why are we randomly cutting, like, not allowing kids to enroll in coverage when they’re in high school so that they can engage in team sports,” she said, “or make sure that we’re setting them up to have healthier futures as young adults?”
She pointed to other states in New England that provide coverage up to adulthood, like Vermont’s Immigrant Health Insurance Plan which covers undocumented youth up to age 19 and Maine’s Children’s Health Insurance Program, which covers children under 21.
Villeda said she’s heard concerns from parents in the community with kids who are going to age out of the program. Community members like them, Villeda said, are committed to seeing the HUSKY program expanded.
“At the same time, I feel very relieved that they didn’t cut the [current] HUSKY program,” Villeda said, considering the federal challenges that state lawmakers are contending with.
Potential harm to undocumented youth with Medicaid cuts
Lawmakers in Washington D.C. are currently considering a package, dubbed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”, with serious spending cuts that could impact the HUSKY Health program.
Under the bill, states like Connecticut that provide state health care regardless of immigration status could be punished for doing so, even though the state uses its own funding to cover immigrant health care, not federal Medicaid funding.
Georgetown Public Policy expert Joan Alker said if the current proposal were to pass, the federal government would cut $3 billion of Medicaid funding to Connecticut if it continued the HUSKY Health program. The move would gut half of Connecticut’s Medicaid funding.
Since the HUSKY Health program is completely state-funded, it could be a potential source to pull funding from in order to cover that hole left by clawed back federal dollars.
“I’d be very surprised if Connecticut does not drop those children,” Alker said. “Estimates I have—there’s about 15,000 children under 15 who are covered by the state of Connecticut.”
Representative Jillian Gilchrest, a West Hartford Democrat and House chair of the Human Services committee, said the uncertainty around the federal funding cuts had lawmakers like her focused on “holding the line” on the healthcare coverage for undocumented youth.
“I think the fight is very challenging to expand upon what we have at this moment in our country’s history, when we’re really trying to defend to keep health care for anyone who is undocumented in our state,” Gilchrest said.
Nevertheless, Gilchrest said before cuts can negatively impact those covered undocumented immigrants, she is committed to blocking those efforts from the federal government.
“There’s many of us, including myself, who will be pushing to fight back the federal government trying to involve themselves in how we spend our state dollars,” she said.
The fight for healthcare access carries on
Sonia Hernandez, a community organizer with the pro-immigrant advocacy group Make the Road Connecticut, has family members and friends in her community with children that have HUSKY healthcare coverage. She said they’re worried about what will happen to their kids once they are past the age of 15 if the program isn’t expanded.
“You can’t tell your kids, ‘Don’t get sick after you turn 15,’” Hernandez said in Spanish.
Hernandez said it’s unfortunate that the HUSKY wasn’t expanded this session, but she and her fellow advocates are going to continue “con la lucha”, or “with the fight”.
“We knew that this fight was going to be more difficult than in other years,” she said, “but regardless, we’re going to keep the attitude and positivity to keep fighting. Yes, in some cases there’s fear, but we don’t want that fear to define us and to take away from what we’ve been able to achieve.”
Given that we are still in the first year of President Trump’s return to office, Hernandez said she and her fellow advocates are aware that there will be more challenges ahead.
The fight moving forward will not just be for expansion, she said, but also to make sure the current HUSKY Health program stays the same.
“Independent of our immigration status, we are human beings,” she said, “and one of our humanitarian rights is to have suitable access to healthcare, especially for the most vulnerable who are children and older adults.”
Connecticut Public’s state government reporter, Michayla Savitt, and Frankie Graziano, host of the politics show “The Wheelhouse”, contributed to this report.
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If you’re reading this, you believe in trusted journalism and in learning without paywalls. You value access to educational content kids love and enriching cultural programming.
Now all of that is at risk.
Federal funding for public media is under threat and if it goes, the impact to our communities will be devastating.
Together, we can defend it. It’s time to protect what matters.
Your voice has protected public media before. Now, it’s needed again. Learn how you can protect the news and programming you depend on.