Emergency Medicaid expenses, one of the issues at the center of the budget dispute that led to the current government shutdown, represent less than 1% of the entire disbursement of that federal health insurance program, according to a study published this Thursday in the specialized journal JAMA.
Services covered by Medicaid emergency expenses include life-saving procedures, such as amputations or heart attack treatment, as well as birth care. In some states these expenses can also be used for cancer and dialysis treatments.
Democrats are demanding that to reopen the Government there be a budget agreement that recovers cut funds to Medicaid. While Republicans in Congress defend these billion-dollar cuts to Medicaid, because they assure that these cuts will only limit the health care given to immigrants without legal status and people with temporary status, such as Dreamers with DACA, Tepesianos or those who have a pending asylum application.
The latter are considered people “legally present” but who do not yet have legalized status. The federal government has accounted for these 1.4 million people and knows where they are, because the vast majority are in pending processes for issues such as receiving permanent residence or green card.
These results suggest that cuts to emergency Medicaid will produce very minimal savings.”
researchers in jama
Federal law prohibits undocumented immigrants from receiving any subsidies for their health coverage through Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act (nicknamed Obamacare) or other programs of their type. But the exception to this is Medicaid emergency spending, precisely because it aims to cover the care of people who, although they do not have legal status, could die if they do not receive care.
The study published this Thursday in the Journal of the American Medical Association analyzed data from 38 states and Washington DC that reported how they used emergency expenses during fiscal year 2022. The researchers found that the average outlay was $10 and that in total it amounted to 0.4% of the total Medicaid expenses of all those states.
Looking only at states with a high percentage of undocumented populations, the researchers found that emergency Medicaid spending accounted for approximately 0.9% of all spending on the program at the state level.
(Experts question the Secretary of Health’s statements about paracetamol, pregnant women and autism)
“Although states with larger undocumented populations spent approximately 15 times more per capita on emergency Medicaid, this spending was still less than 1% of all Medicaid costs even in those states, representing a very limited fiscal impact,” the study in JAMA notes.
“These results suggest that cuts to emergency Medicaid will produce very minimal savings and will disproportionately affect states where many undocumented people live,” the researchers add.
Legislation pushed by Democratic Party congressmen to reverse cuts to Medicaid does not seek to change any law on whether or not undocumented people can receive federal health care under these coverage programs.
