HEALTH PLANS: California Blue Cross now accepting Mexican ID

Blue Cross of California, (owned by Wellpoint) has been talking a good game for a while about creating low cost products to help the uninsured. And they have been making some progress, Now they are taking a real and somewhat controversial step in that they are allowing immigrants without documentation other than that issued by Mexican consulates to sign up for health insurance. That's a move that will have anti-immigrant groups, of which there are plenty in California, hopping mad--they've already thrown a fit over the issuing of driving licenses to illegal/undocumented immigrants in the last days of the Davis administration and Arnie the Governator (a not-too-legal immigrant himself back in the day) has promised to revoke that right. But it's also a move that actually addresses to some extent the problem of uninsurance in the Hispanic population here, which is currently over 34%.

Here's the press release.