Giving Compass' Take:

· After recent Democratic debates discussing healthcare coverage, Francie Diep discusses the potential impact of providing healthcare to everyone, including undocumented immigrants.

· How would universal healthcare coverage affect those currently covered under a federal program? 

· Check out this article about undocumented immigrants’ health care access.

It was a rare moment of total agreement in the Democratic debates last week. On the second night, when asked whether public health insurance should cover undocumented immigrants, every presidential hopeful there raised his or her hand.

"Our country is healthier when everybody is healthier," Indianan mayor Pete Buttigieg said. "We do ourselves no favors by having 11 million undocumented people in our country be unable to access health care."

President Donald Trump condemned the idea quickly, on Twitter. Later, while answering questions from reporters, he said: "If you look at what they're doing in California, how they're treating people, they don't treat their people as well as they treat illegal immigrants." California had just expanded its Medicaid program, Medi-Cal, to cover undocumented youth up to age 26. "It's crazy. And it's mean, and it's very unfair to our citizens," Trump said of the policy.

The president's statements suggest that covering the undocumented hurts citizens—and perhaps, though he didn't mention them, legally present residents of America, who are also eligible to buy plans on the Obamacare exchanges, and many of whom can apply for Medicaid and Medicare. So is it true that letting unauthorized immigrants in would mean worse care for everyone else?

Read the full article about healthcare for all by Francie Diep at Pacific Standard.