How Democrats are trying to bust Republican lies about healthcare for undocumented immigrants | US federal government shutdown 2025

LOn Wednesday, the Congress Republicans and Donald Trump repeated the misleading claims that the Democrats were trying to adopt a resolution that would provide “free health care to illegal”. It has become a well -spreader chorus that feeds the GOP legislators when the government’s financing expired this week.

On Wednesday, at the White House, the vice -president JD Vance said that the democrats’ spending plan “would have canceled” the work of the Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) – which ended the eligibility of many types of immigrants legally present to access health coverage funded by the Federal Government, such as Medicaid, Medicare and Applicable Care Act (ACA) Health insurance.

Meanwhile, the Republican leaders of Capitol Hill maintained their colleagues through the aisle holds the government’s “hostage”, while duel financing bills continue to fail in the Senate.

“They decided that they prefer to offer advantages financed by taxpayers to illegal foreigners to keep the doors open to the American people,” Mike Johnson, the Republican President of the Chamber, said on a press conference on Thursday.

The Democrats castigated the complaints of the Republicans.

“Not a single federal dollar is to provide health insurance to undocumented immigrants. Not. One. Penny,” said the best democrat in the Senate, Chuck Schumer. “Republicans prefer to lie and close the government to protect your health care.”

In an interview with ABC News, the first day of government closure, the minority head of the Hakeem Jeffries Chamber checked republican claims. “The federal law prohibits the use of Medicare, Medicaid, the health insurance program for children and the affordable care law to provide health insurance in any way, a form or a form, to undocumented immigrants. Period, full stop, “he said. “And the Democrats are not trying to change this.”

By supervising the question as on illegal immigration, this moves the debate to land which is politically more “more user -friendly” for the GOP, according to Jonathan Oberlander, professor of health policy at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

“”[Republicans] I absolutely do not want to talk about health care provisions, “said Oberlander.” While Democrats, in general, do not want to talk much about immigration. They want to talk about health care very much and people who lose health insurance, and that’s exactly what they do. »»

Undocumented immigrants remain unacceptable to health insurance funded by the federal government and are unable to receive Medicaid emergency treatment, according to longtime American laws. Instead, the Democrat funding patch seeks to reverse most of the Medicaid cups that should take effect after the Trump national policy has adopted earlier this year.

This includes the authorization of non -citizens legally present – which includes several groups, such as refugees and asylum seekers, those who have temporary protected status (TPS) and survivors of domestic violence and trafficking in human beings who expect visas or documentation – to register for certain federal health care programs. All these immigrants have legally entered the country and are recorded by the federal government.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the impact of the OBBBA will leave around 1.4 million non-citizens legally present without coverage.

While the impasse in Washington continues, vocalizing one of these shades seems futile, explains Oberlander. “These are all groups that could potentially order political sympathy, but I’m not sure they can unravel the disinformation, the toxic environment and the restrictive era in which we are currently living,” he added.

“I think what they [Democrats] will do, and what they have done is just say that it has nothing to do with undocumented immigrants. It is not on this subject. You withdraw health insurance from Americans. »»

According to Michael Trujillo, a veteran democratic strategist, the Republicans were able to get their messages around the government’s closure by playing “the offensive”, mainly because the language of preservation of Democrats is more difficult to sell.

“What we are trying to do is keep what people have today,” said Trujillo.

Trujillo noted that Democrats must also “repeat the lie” in order to dismantle the rapid and parasitic assertions of the Republicans that their financing bill will provide health care to undocumented immigrants.

“If their [Republicans’] The debate is that we accuse you of loving sour milk. And then our answer is: “We actually don’t like sour milk”. Well, guess what, Sour Milk has become the problem, “said Trujillo.

This week, Karoline Leavitt said that programs like TPS are a “full abuse of the immigration system” which allow “illegal world to obtain free advantages”, while speaking to journalists. Since his return to his duties, Trump has tried to end temporary protections for several countries thanks to a series of prosecution with various degrees of success.

In particular, the White House press secretary was not clear during the answer to a question of a journalist, who asked if the doctors should deal with patients in emergency rooms, regardless of their immigration status – which is required by federal law. “I am not talking about emergency rooms across the country, I speak on behalf of the President of the United States,” she replied.

Thanks to their continuous resolution, the Democrats also try to remedy the Obbba cuts at the Medicaid hospitals that hospitals receive from the federal government – for the emergency care that they are mandated to provide people who have no eligible immigration status, but who would otherwise qualify for Medicaid. According to a recent KFF analysis, this type of Medicaid emergency expenditure has represented less than 1% of the total expenses of the program between 2017-2023.

Larry Levitt, executive vice-president of the health policy in KFF, said that the false affirmation on which has access to health care was the “greatest effort of disinformation on a question of health policy since the Republicans said that the affordable care law included” death groups “.

“I am sure that this is an effective subject of discussion to say that Democrats want to extend health care for undocumented immigrants, but that is simply not true,” he said.

A key aspect of the bill for financing democrats, and they have stressed more than the inversion of reductions in republican budgetary law, is a permanent extension of largely popular ACA premium credits, which should expire at the end of this year. KFF believes that health care costs should double registrants for the vast majority of registrants when these subsidies travel. Meanwhile, the CBO has planned that around 4 million people lose their health insurance if improved tax credits expire at the end of 2025.

“My feeling is that they [Democratic leadership] would take an agreement if they extended the subsidies, “said Oberlander. He also pointed out that the push of the Democrats to reverse the broader health care reductions in the president’s tax legislation could be more a declaration than a request: “They want to draw attention to the fact that the Republicans made them reverse and what they just adopted.