Former vice president Joe Biden’s support of emergency healthcare services for undocumented immigrants is an idea already woven into U.S. health policy and offered voluntarily by nonprofit hospitals.
“In an emergency, they should have healthcare. Everybody should,” former vice president Joe Biden told CNN’s Chris Cuomo Friday, clarifying his position on just how much healthcare undocumented immigrants should be allowed under U.S. law. “How do you say ‘you’re undocumented, I’m gonna let you die, man?'”
Just how much healthcare undocumented immigrants should receive has been grabbing headlines lately among Democrats seeking their party’s nomination in 2020 for the U.S. Presidency.
But emergency care and treatment at hospitals as well as federally-subsidized community health centers is already available and provided to undocumented immigrants.
“Whatever their situation under the law, the 11.3 million undocumented immigrants currently in the United States still need, and sometimes get, health care,” Dr. Alan Taylor Kelley, of the University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy & Innovation wrote in a recent column discussing undocumented care for immigrants.
“Even if they don’t have health insurance, federal law requires hospitals to care for them in emergencies,” Kelley said. “They can turn to safety-net clinics for basic needs.”
Undocumented immigrants are also receiving support from Medicaid for poor Americans and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
“Medicaid payments for emergency services may be made on behalf of individuals who are otherwise eligible for Medicaid but for their immigration status,” The Kaiser Family Foundation said in a report on healthcare coverage for immigrants published in February. “These payments cover costs for emergency care for lawfully present immigrants who remain ineligible for Medicaid as well as undocumented immigrants. Since 2002, states have had the option to provide prenatal care to women regardless of immigration status by extending CHIP coverage to the unborn child.”
States also have varying degrees of health coverage under locally administered programs for undocumented immigrants and hospitals voluntarily include such care for the undocumented as uncompensated expenses when they justify their tax-exemptions. The American Hospital Association said tax-exempt hospitals provided $95 billion in total benefits to their communities in 2016 alone, citing the industry’s most recent report.
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