Either illegal immigrants are getting healthcare benefits or they’re not. In this case, two things cannot be true at the same time. Despite that, Democrats are still trying to claim that illegal immigrants are not getting healthcare benefits when they, in fact, are. And the Democrat Party wants it to happen. Here’s the receipt: https://x.com/NBCNews/status/1144419673401958400. The illegal immigrant burden on our healthcare system is monstrous, and the Democrats have been unashamedly defrauding the American people by the billions of dollars to fund it.
How exactly are they pulling off this heist? Until the Republican Congress passed and President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law earlier this year, Democrats employed various methods to get away with pilfering American taxpayers’ pockets. This is exactly why the Democrats are keeping the government shut down — because the OBBBA makes it more difficult for them to give out “free” stuff to people who are not citizens of this country.
As our Gregory Lyakhov rightly noted, by “siding with loopholes and manipulation over taxpayers, Democrats have made clear they would rather protect benefits for noncitizens than protect the program for Americans.”
According to a preliminary audit of the Medicaid program done by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), five states and Washington, DC, siphoned more than $1.35 billion of federal taxpayer Medicaid funding to illegals. The Federalist reports, “California, D.C., Illinois, Washington, Colorado, and Oregon spent millions each on illegals, with California spending the bulk, topping over $1.3 billion alone.” CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz says that was “just in the last few months.” If that gross amount of expenditure on illegals happened in a few months, one cannot fathom how much must have been spent on illegals during the four years of the Biden administration.
States share responsibility for Medicaid funding with the federal government, but once they receive federal funding, they manage the program independently. The law prohibits states from using federal funding for illegals, but since money is fungible, this does not keep them from using their “own” money for illegals. This is how many Democrats can then tout that federal dollars aren’t going to illegals.
Another abuse of the system is that emergency rooms are required by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) to treat anyone, regardless of their financial circumstances or immigration status. This allows illegals to flood emergency rooms and receive care on the taxpayer’s dime. Dr. Oz confirms, “Some want to deny that illegal immigrants are receiving Medicaid. Others insist it’s illegal for Medicaid to cover illegal immigrants. And others accurately point out that hospitals can provide emergency services to illegal immigrants under the program.”
An additional loophole utilized by Democrats is in the allocation of grants for research studies and state and local programs aimed at making it easier for “undocumented persons” to gain access to government healthcare and services. “Illegal immigrants have benefitted from at least $197 million in direct federal healthcare-related grants since fiscal year 2021,” reveals the Illinois-based nonprofit Open the Books (OTB).
There are numerous examples of these state programs that receive government grants, and California, again, appears to be at the forefront.
The NIH spent $4.2 million for a study focused on California’s guaranteed annual income experiment on “the fundamental causes of cancer inequities,” which, of course, includes illegal immigrants. Another NIH grant for $2.5 million was awarded to UCLA to research “the use of reproductive healthcare among Asian immigrant women,” including “undocumented Asians.” The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), a sub-agency of the Department of Health & Human Services, spent at least $75.6 million on grants serving illegal immigrants in OTB’s findings. Roughly $31 million in grants was awarded by the HHS Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to state and local programs that include “undocumented” immigrants among their beneficiaries. One of those was $4 million sent specifically to Long Beach, California, for a program to increase access for low-income and “undocumented populations” to behavioral health and substance use disorder services.
I don’t know about you, but I think I would rather “make asylums great again” than throw gobs of money into programs that only incentivize the behaviors they purport to “help.”
Oregon unabashedly announced two years ago that it was allowing illegal immigrants to access Medicaid benefits, saying, “As of July 1, 2023, people of all ages who meet income and other criteria qualify for full OHP [Oregon Medicaid] benefits and other services and supports, no matter their immigration status.” Again, they claim that it is “state” Medicaid money being used to support this, but there’s one problem with that. The federal government reimburses 70% of state Medicaid spending, leaving the rest of us to foot the majority of the bill. It’s long past time to fix the broken ObamaCare scam.
The Center for Immigration Studies CIS estimated that 59% of households headed by an illegal are on one or more welfare programs, whether it’s cash, food assistance, Medicaid, or housing. If that data is accurate and the trend continues, our already debt-laden country will crash — that amount of excessive spending is impossible to sustain.
It is imperative that we completely close the borders until we get better control over the situation, ramp up the deportation efforts that are ongoing, and pass laws that require proof of citizenship before anyone can access welfare programs.
