Emergency medical expenses, a problem partially fueling the ongoing federal government shutdownAccording to the Federal Health Insurance Program, it accounts for less than 1% of total federal health insurance program costs. study published Thursday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
research of analyzed data from Washington, D.C., and the 38 states that reported their emergency Medicaid spending for fiscal year 2022.
The researchers found that overall, emergency Medicaid assistance accounted for 0.4% of total Medicaid spending, with an average cost of about $10 per person. Services covered by emergency Medicaid are life-saving procedures, including labor and delivery, the authors write. Some states also cover dialysis and cancer treatments.
Republicans in Congress support a trillion-dollar cut to Medicaid that they say would limit care only to immigrants without legal status and others “lawfully present” in the United States, including Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals beneficiaries who came to the U.S. illegally as children; people with temporary protected status; and refugees and asylum seekers who are still going through the legal process.
US legislation already prohibits unauthorized immigrants from receiving any federally subsidized health insurance through Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, the Children's Health Insurance Program, or otherwise.
A limited exception to this rule is emergency Medicaid, which covers care intended to stabilize people with serious illnesses who would otherwise be eligible for Medicaid but for their immigration status.
Overall, Medicaid emergency health care spending accounted for about 0.9% of total state Medicaid spending in states with high shares of the undocumented population, compared with 0.1% in states with the lowest shares, according to the study.
“Although states with large undocumented populations spend approximately 15 times more per capita, emergency Medicaid assistance still represents less than 1% of total Medicaid spending even in states with large undocumented populations, creating a limited financial burden on Medicaid,” the study states. “These results suggest that cutting emergency health care spending would result in minimal overall cost savings and would disproportionately harm states with large undocumented populations.”
The Democratic bill opposing Republicans' proposed cuts to Medicaid does not seek to change existing law that bars people in the U.S. illegally from receiving federal health insurance. Instead, the controversy largely centers around immigrants who have been declared “lawfully present” by the federal government but who have not been formally granted enforceable legal status.
About 1.4 million people are believed to be in the United States legally. The government knows who they are, and many of them go through the process of becoming officially legal or getting a green card.
