by Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell
The White House Exposes Democrats’ efforts to give undocumented immigrants access to health care, according to a memo obtained by the Biden administration Daily signal.
“This memo discusses specific actions the Biden administration has taken to ensure Obamacare and Medicaid benefits are available to undocumented immigrants,” the document reads.
President Donald Trumpthe administration issued the memo on the seventh day of the government shutdown, which Republicans said was due to the reluctance of Senate Democrats to pass a neat budget resolution that does not restore health care funding for undocumented immigrants.
The memo described “how the Biden administration and Democratic states have abused federal resources to provide health care to undocumented immigrants.”
According to the memo, “14 states and the District of Columbia have ‘state-funded’ health care programs for undocumented immigrants.” These include California, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont and Washington.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is currently reviewing and auditing eight of these states.
The memo states that it has been well documented that California has exploited a federal loophole to fund its “state-funded” Medicaid program for undocumented immigrants, but “broader concerns about program integrity remain regarding the existence of such programs in the states where they are implemented.”
For example, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General found that California improperly claimed $52.7 million in federal Medicaid funds to insure undocumented immigrants in less than a year. This happened because California did not adequately separate emergency Medicaid funds from non-emergency Medicaid.
The White House has called Obamacare allowing states to waive certain provisions of the law as another example of Democratic policies allowing undocumented people to benefit from federally funded health care.
“The Biden administration has approved numerous state waivers to allow undocumented immigrants to access health insurance by repealing the statutory ban on undocumented immigrants enrolling in Obamacare plans, thereby expanding health care coverage to undocumented immigrants,” the memo reads.
The waivers allow federal dollars to be used to subsidize insurance for undocumented immigrants both directly and indirectly, the White House says.
States with waivers that reduce federal spending on Obamacare subsidies receive funds called “pass-through” payments. They are intended to reflect the difference between federal spending on Obamacare subsidies in the absence of the waiver and federal spending on Obamacare subsidies under the waiver.
However, the memo shows that federal pass-through payments were used to provide subsidies to undocumented immigrants who qualified for coverage under the waiver.
“Furthermore, when a state uses federal funds provided through programs designed to purchase premium costs for all exchange consumers, such as reinsurance programs, illegal immigrants with plans that benefit from such premium reductions actually receive a premium subsidy from federal funds,” the memo says.
The White House cited cases in the Democratic-led states of Colorado, Maryland and Washington as examples of illegal health care waivers.
The memo shows that Medicaid spending on emergency services for undocumented immigrants has nearly tripled under the Biden administration, from $3.07 billion in fiscal year 2020 to $9.12 billion in fiscal year 2024.
Medicaid law requires states to provide a 90-day waiting period, called a “reasonable opportunity period,” so that states can verify the immigration status of people applying for the program.
While states have traditionally had the ability to limit the number of reasonable opportunity periods a person could receive before verifying their immigration status in order to maintain eligibility for Medicaid benefits, the memo says President Joe Biden has prevented states from limiting the number of reasonable opportunity periods a person can receive if they reapply for Medicaid at the end of each period, according to the White House.
“This action prevented states from requiring Medicaid applicants to verify their immigration status, creating an easily exploitable loophole through which undocumented immigrants could obtain federally funded insurance,” the memo said.
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Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal.
