{"id":193159,"date":"2025-10-06T10:42:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T10:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/193159\/"},"modified":"2025-10-06T10:42:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T10:42:10","slug":"how-democrats-are-trying-to-bust-republican-lies-about-healthcare-for-undocumented-immigrants-us-federal-government-shutdown-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/193159\/","title":{"rendered":"How Democrats are trying to bust Republican lies about healthcare for undocumented immigrants | US federal government shutdown 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leading up to the government shutdown on Wednesday, congressional Republicans and Donald Trump<\/a> have repeated misleading claims that Democrats were trying to pass a resolution that would provide \u201cfree healthcare for illegals\u201d. It\u2019s become a well-rehearsed refrain fueling GOP lawmakers as government funding lapsed this week.<\/p>\n

At the White House on Wednesday, the vice-president JD Vance said the Democrats\u2019 spending plan \u201cwould have undone\u201d the work of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) \u2013 which ended the eligibility<\/a> of many types of lawfully present immigrants to access federally funded health coverage, like Medicaid, Medicare and Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies for private health insurance.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile Republican leadership on Capitol Hill has maintained their colleagues across the aisle are holding the government \u201chostage\u201d, while dueling funding bills continue to fail in the Senate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have made a decision that they would rather give taxpayer funded benefits to illegal aliens, than to keep the doors open for the American people,\u201d said Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, in a news conference on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Democrats have lambasted Republicans\u2019 claims.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot a single federal dollar goes to providing health insurance for undocumented immigrants. NOT. ONE. PENNY,\u201d said<\/a> the top Senate Democrat, Chuck Schumer. \u201cRepublicans would rather lie and shut down the government down than protect your healthcare.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an interview<\/a> with ABC News, on the first day of the government shutdown, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries fact-checked Republican claims. \u201cFederal law prohibits the use of Medicare, Medicaid, the Children\u2019s Health Insurance Program and the Affordable Care Act to provide health insurance in any way, shape or form, to undocumented immigrants. Period, full stop,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd Democrats aren\u2019t trying to change that.\u201d<\/p>\n

By framing the issue as being about illegal immigration, it shifts the debate to ground that is politically \u201cfriendlier\u201d for the GOP, according to Jonathan Oberlander, professor of healthcare policy at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Republicans] absolutely do not want to talk about the healthcare provisions,\u201d Oberlander said. \u201cWhereas Democrats<\/a>, in general, don\u2019t want to talk a lot about immigration. They do want to talk a lot about healthcare and people losing health insurance, and so that\u2019s exactly what they\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Undocumented immigrants remain ineligible for federally funded health insurance, and are only able to receive emergency Medicaid treatment, according to longstanding US laws. Instead, Democrats\u2019 funding patch seeks to reverse many of the cuts to Medicaid that are set to take effect after Trump\u2019s sweeping domestic policy agenda passed earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Chuck Schumer speaks at a press conference. Photograph: Anadolu\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

This includes allowing lawfully present noncitizens \u2013 which includes several groups, such as refugees and asylum seekers, those with Temporary Protected Status (TPS), and survivors of domestic abuse and human trafficking who are awaiting visas or documentation \u2013 to still enroll in certain federal health care programs. All of these immigrants have entered the country legally and are accounted for by the federal government.<\/p>\n

The congressional budget office (CBO) estimates that the impact of the OBBBA will leave around 1.4 million lawfully present noncitizens without coverage.<\/p>\n

While the impasse in Washington continues, vocalizing any of this nuance seems futile, says Oberlander. \u201cThese are all groups that potentially could command political sympathy, but I\u2019m not sure they can break through the misinformation, the toxic environment and the restrictive era we\u2019re living in right now,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what they [Democrats] are going to do, and what they have been doing, is simply to say this has nothing to do with undocumented immigrants. This is not about them. You\u2019re taking health insurance away from Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Michael Trujillo, a veteran Democratic strategist, Republicans have been able to land their messaging around the government shutdown by playing \u201coffense\u201d, mainly because Democrats\u2019 language of preservation is harder to sell.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re trying to do is keep what people have today,\u201d Trujillo said.<\/p>\n

Trujillo noted that Democrats also have to \u201crepeat the lie\u201d in order to dismantle Republicans\u2019 rapid and spurious claims that their funding bill will provide healthcare for undocumented immigrants.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf their [Republicans\u2019] debate is, we\u2019re accusing you of liking sour milk. And then our response is, \u2018we in fact do not like sour milk\u2019. Well, guess what, sour milk just became the issue,\u201d Trujillo said.<\/p>\n

This week, Karoline Leavitt said that programs like TPS are a \u201ccomplete abuse of the immigration system\u201d that allow \u201cillegals from all over the world to get free benefits\u201d, while speaking to reporters. Since returning to office, Trump has attempted to<\/a> end temporary protections for several countries through a series of lawsuits with varying degrees of success.<\/p>\n

Notably, the White House press secretary was unclear when answering a question from a reporter, who asked whether doctors should treat patients in emergency rooms regardless of their immigration status \u2013 which is required under federal law. \u201cI don\u2019t speak for emergency rooms across the country, I speak for the president of the United States,\u201d she replied.<\/p>\n

Through their continuing resolution, Democrats are also trying to remedy the OBBBA\u2019s cuts to Medicaid dollars hospitals receive from the federal government \u2013 for emergency care they are mandated to provide to individuals who do not have an eligible immigration status, but would otherwise qualify for Medicaid. According to a recent analysis by KFF, this kind of emergency Medicaid spending accounted for less than 1%<\/a> of the program\u2019s total expenditure between 2017-2023.<\/p>\n

Larry Levitt, executive vice-president for health policy at KFF, said the false claim about who is getting access to healthcare has been the \u201cbiggest effort at misinformation on a health policy issue since Republicans claimed that the Affordable Care Act included \u2018death panels\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure it\u2019s an effective talking point to say the Democrats want to expand health care for undocumented immigrants, but it\u2019s just not true,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

A key aspect of the Democrats\u2019 funding bill, and one they have emphasized more than the reversal of the cuts in the Republican budget law, is a permanent extension of the widely popular ACA premium tax credits, which are set to expire at the end of this year. KFF estimates that healthcare costs are set to double<\/a> for the vast majority of enrollees when these subsidies lapse. Meanwhile, the CBO has projected that around 4 million people stand to lose their health insurance if enhanced tax credits expire at the end of 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy sense is that they [Democratic leadership] would take a deal if they just get the subsidies extended,\u201d Oberlander said. He also underscored that Democrats\u2019 push to reverse the wider healthcare cuts in the president\u2019s sweeping tax legislation may be more of a statement than a demand: \u201cThey want to call attention to the fact that Republicans enacted them and what the consequences are, but they know, realistically, there\u2019s no chance that they\u2019re going to reverse what they just passed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leading up to the government shutdown on Wednesday, congressional Republicans and Donald Trump have repeated misleading claims that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,137,500],"class_list":{"0":"post-193159","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}