Background: Welfare provision for noncitizens has been at the center of political debates. Understanding how Californian noncitizens and undocumented immigrants access health care would provide useful information to guide health policies. Method: The neighborhood-level Census data were used to learn the factors related to insurance coverage. LA County is identified as a case study to understand the status quo of health care access for noncitizen immigrants. Data from the Center for Migration Studies was used to derive the unmet demand of My Health LA, a county program that aims to cover the uninsured. Result: Two main factors that predict the extent of local insurance coverage, especially for noncitizens, are the percentage of Latino foreign-born and their chance of naturalization. The paper also finds that in 2014, approximately 61% of undocumented immigrants and 49% of noncitizens were uninsured in LA county, compared with less than 20% for citizens. Conclusion: Improving health care access among the undocumented would effectively reduce overall uninsured rates. This study advocates expanding county indigent programs to achieve higher health care coverage of the undocumented. Using lower-bound estimates, if My Health LA were to cover the entire potential patient pool, the cap must be increased by approximately 60%. © 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Affordable Care Act Immigrant Undocumented Access to care My Health LA noncitizens

California medically uninsured insurance indigent Article neighborhood human adult undocumented immigrant Hispanic health care access