How Congress can kick illegal immigrants off Medicaid — and save us billions

It can all be done if Republicans roll back Medicaid for illegal aliens in their coming reconciliation bill.

As we show in our new report for the Foundation for Government Accountability, migrants have been allowed and even encouraged to abuse Medicaid — at enormous cost to Americans.

{snip}

This creates an obvious incentive to enter the US illegally, since foreigners know they can get health care on the taxpayers’ dime.

It also pushes vulnerable Americans, including the elderly and people with disabilities, to the back of the line for care. Often, they’re stuck behind able-bodied adults who shouldn’t be in this country at all.

Since 2020, according to information we’ve gleaned from 18 states, Medicaid expenditures on illegal aliens have grown by more than 75%.

{snip}

For years, states have allowed illegal aliens to sign up for Medicaid, pending verification of their citizenship or lawful immigration status — a grace window grounded in an assumption of good faith.

But states weren’t prepared for the unprecedented influx of illegal migrants in the Biden years, which led to far more non-citizens than ever before applying for Medicaid.

In the states that responded to our data requests, the number of Medicaid recipients who couldn’t prove their citizenship or lawful immigration status rose by more than 400% between 2020 and 2023.

{snip}

The Biden administration also made it harder to verify applicants’ identities by “minimizing” recordkeeping rules.

The goal was clearly to get more illegal aliens on Medicaid, regardless of the cost to taxpayers or to Americans who rely on the health care program.

Trump has promised to put Americans first, and Congress must help him succeed.

That starts by ending the federal loophole allowing people who haven’t proved their citizenship or lawful immigration status to obtain Medicaid coverage.

{snip}

It isn’t hard to provide a birth certificate, Social Security card or other document proving citizenship when applying for Medicaid. Legitimate applicants who have misplaced their documents would still be protected; Medicaid retroactively covers 90 days of care.

Making documentation a condition of getting on the program will save taxpayers at least $5 billion over the next decade, we estimate.

Next, Congress should stop states from covering illegal immigrants in other ways.

{snip}

If Congress prohibited any administrative Medicaid spending on illegal aliens, we estimate federal taxpayers would save another $7 billion over 10 years.

That might make those 12 states change their coverage policies. But if they insist on continuing to deprioritize vulnerable Americans, Congress could penalize those states further.

We recommend that lawmakers impose a penalty, docking those states’ federal Medicaid match by 5% for every quarter in which they continue to cover illegal aliens.

Over a decade, federal taxpayers could save more than $200 billion in this way — though the scofflaw states would likely cry uncle well before those savings occur.

Either way, taxpayers win: either through less state spending on illegal recipients, or less federal matching for wayward blue states.

{snip}

While low-income families suffer worse health outcomes, taxpayers pay a pretty penny to cover illegal immigrants while unwittingly encouraging even more to cross our borders.

Trump has rightly vowed to solve these problems. It’s up to Congress to help him put American Medicaid recipients first.

Hayden Dublois is data and analytics director at the Foundation for Government Accountability, where Addison Scherler is data investigator.

* Original Article:

https://nypost.com/2025/03/30/opinion/how-congress-can-kick-illegal-immigrants-off-medicaid-and-save-us-billions/?utm_source=smartnews&utm_campaign=nypost&utm_medium=referral