Some states doing more than Trump admin requires on Medicaid immigration data: Report
The Department of Health and Human Services under President Donald Trump started sharing Medicaid information with federal immigration officials last year. Now, KFF Health News reports that several states are using their own public health agencies to assist in this effort.
In April, North Carolina passed a law requiring its public health agencies to flag Medicaid recipients to the Department of Homeland Security if their legal status is in question. Republican lawmakers did this by putting the mandate into a bill that allocated $319 million in funds to Medicaid that were cut after the legislature was unable to pass a budget.
The state will require employees to ask those who receive Medicaid for proof of immigration status beginning in October. Those without it get reported to federal authorities.
Four other states, Indiana, Louisiana, Montana, and Wyoming, passed similar laws, while Oklahoma and Tennessee state lawmakers are considering these measures, KFF Health News wrote.
KFF wrote that all seven measures go beyond the federal requirement by giving immigration enforcement agents Medicaid recipients’ personal information if asked.
These states are all Republican-led, in both the governor’s office and both legislative chambers.
“I expect this law will lead to more families asking whether it is safe to seek healthcare, whether information can be shared with immigration authorities, and whether enrolling a child or seeking treatment could expose them to enforcement consequences,” Yesenia Polanco-Galdamez, an immigration attorney in North Carolina, told KFF.
Republican state Rep. Donny Lambeth argued during a debate in the House of Representatives that the bill is necessary to start “looking at fraud, abuse issues we know exist within the system.”
Data shows over 75,200,000 people are enrolled in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Programs. While undocumented immigrants are generally not able to get Medicaid, some lawful noncitizens do qualify, including green-card holders and refugees. Even then, they can face some restrictions.
The Cato Institute, a libertarian organization, found that immigrants, as well as their children born in the U.S, “use significantly less welfare per capita than native-born Americans do.”
In their newsletter “Health Care in Motion,” the Harvard Center for Health, Law, Policy and Innovation wrote that agencies sharing Medicaid data with federal immigration authorities create added barriers to care “for many lower income individuals, including undocumented immigrants, lawfully present immigrants, and U.S. citizen household members of immigrants.”
“Data sharing between Medicaid and immigration enforcement agencies is likely to deter people in these households from enrolling in or maintaining coverage, or accessing needed medical care, including emergency care,” the authors at the center said. “These fears are likely compounded by other aspects of the Trump Administration’s immigration enforcement actions.”
While Republican states press for even more stringent requirements, Democratic states are fighting it. Nearly a dozen states joined a California lawsuit seeking to prevent the sharing of Medicaid information.
“I’m deeply disturbed by the Trump Administration’s reckless and unprecedented weaponization of the private, sensitive data of Medicaid recipients,” California Attorney General Rob General Bonta said at the time.
Earlier this year, a federal judge ruled that states can share recipients’ identities but not their medical information.
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
