And the Biden-Harris administration has ensured that the worst is yet to come
Illegal aliens now have an on-ramp to Medicaid – as many as 22 million of them.
This budding crisis is a major danger to our health care system and American taxpayers. It’s the direct result of the Biden-Harris administration’s immigration and welfare policies and will surely worsen if Kamala Harris wins in November.
The Biden-Harris White House is shattering a system that was already cracking. My organization recently submitted state freedom of information requests on the number of Medicaid applicants who can’t prove their citizenship status yet receive coverage anyway.
When people apply, states typically check their citizenship status with the federal sources, but if the data doesn’t match, states give applicants a 90-day grace window, known as a “reasonable opportunity period” to collect documentation.
This system wasn’t prepared for the Biden-Harris administration’s dangerous combination of lax border enforcement, welfare expansion and lack of concern for welfare program integrity. Only nine states meaningfully responded to our request, including Arizona, Kentucky, Missouri, Texas and Wisconsin. Some states, like Pennsylvania and Michigan, claimed they had no records at all, while others, like California, demanded exorbitant fees to access the records.
Regardless, the nine responsive states showed that between 2019 and 2023, the number of illegal aliens on Medicaid grew by 500%. The expense to taxpayers has also soared. In the five states that provided financial information, taxpayers forked over nearly 550% more to cover illegal aliens. Across all 50 states, it’s likely that at least 100,000 ineligible aliens are on Medicaid, potentially costing at least a billion dollars a year.
Nationwide, taxpayers could soon be paying tens of billions of dollars on health care for people who have no right to our safety net—including those who have no right to be in the country.
All of health care will suffer, too. Medicaid pays much less than private insurance, so burdening hospitals with illegal aliens will lead to mounting red ink. Some hospitals have already closed, especially in states that expanded Medicaid under ObamaCare, and covering illegal aliens will likely cause more to follow suit.