The truth about the shutdown and health care for immigrants

https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/04/politics/health-care-immigrants-government-shutdown 

 

JD Vance first point was that the asylum-seekers and others with temporary legal status who would be eligible for these programs under the Democrats’ shutdown-ending proposal should nonetheless be treated as “illegal aliens.” He said this was because the Biden administration granted such designations too freely.

To the extent Republicans want to treat them as illegal, they could take other steps to try to strip them of legal status. Unless and until they do, though, these people have legal status under US law and aren’t “illegal aliens.”

 

Vance’s second point was that there is at least one way in which federal dollars can be used to pay for the health care of immigrants who are actually undocumented – i.e. not just classes of people who he would prefer to treat as such.

A federal law called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) mandates that any hospital that receives Medicare funds must treat anyone requiring emergency treatment, regardless of ability to pay, insurance or legal status. And the federal government reimburses hospitals for this treatment.