As recently as last month, the White House insisted that illegal immigrants are “are not eligible to collect benefits associated with the Affordable Care Act.” But undocumented immigrants accessing the Obamacare website, Healthcare.gov, could be forgiven if they thought otherwise.
Under “Citizenship and Immigration Status Questions,” users are told “You don’t have to be a U.S. citizen, U.S. national, or lawfully present immigrant to qualify for health coverage.” [emphasis added] Even if users select “No” when asked if they are “lawfully present,” they are encouraged to “continue with the application.” The relevant sections are as follows:
Much further down the page, the instructions seem to indicate that the “coverage” for those not lawfully present refers to Medicaid coverage for emergency medical conditions:
However, as Politifact pointed out in 2013, “those [emergency medical] policies predate the Affordable Care Act”:
President Obama himself has insisted for years that illegal immigrants would not benefit from Obamacare. In July 2015, he told an audience in Nashville:
But even when assuring undocumented immigrants that information collected during the application process will not be used for “immigration enforcement purposes,” users are also told that “use of health care services through the Marketplace won’t be considered to be a public charge,” seeming to indicate that the undocumented can indeed obtain “health care services through the Marketplace.”
These statements on Healthcare.gov encouraging undocumented immigrants to complete applications to “qualify for health coverage” are ambiguous at best if not outright misleading. Although the White House has declined to say whether or not the Obama administration is willing to grant a request from California to allow undocumented immigrants to obtain coverage through Healthcare.gov, the application process on the website would need only minor tweaking to make such allowances. It remains to be seen if one of President Obama’s final actions in office will be to open his signature healthcare initiative to all comers— documented or not.
