> Do undocumented immigrants qualify for federal healthcare benefits?
No. Undocumented immigrants do not have access to federally funded healthcare coverage, including Medicaid, Medicare, or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). They are also unable to purchase health insurance coverage from the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplace.
Right, they shouldn't have access to ACA, nor should a citizen of Denmark or India. They are foreign nationals and including them in the 4 million uninsured children in the US statistic makes the statistic worthless.
My issue with this article is it suggests there's some massive child uninsured problem in the US, but to get that number they're including foreign citizens. If we included all of south america I'm sure we could find tens of millions of uninsured people. If we included the rest of the world it might be closer to hundreds of millions. That doesn't mean there's a problem with the ACA. There could be a problem with it, but this 4 million number doesn't get us closer to an answer.
So you believe this number is a material amount of undocumented children and not US citizens? Can you prove this assertion? Numbers I was able to find indicate 1-1.1 million undocumented children in the US under 18. Let us assume they are a part of this 4 million stat for the sake of argument. What about the other 3 million children? Is 3 million children not a "massive child uninsured problem"? I believe its an emergency, but I am curious what the other side of that argument is.
To be frank, through policy, we can see that the federal government hates children through Medicaid cuts and states not expanding Medicaid and making it easy to get coverage for children. This is objective fact, based on the data. Otherwise, there would be zero uninsured US citizen children. The message is clear: don't have children in the US, or get out of the US if you intend to have children and can. If you are stuck in the US by having the misfortune to have been born on the wrong soil and without means to leave, my condolences for bad luck.
> “Especially in today’s climate, there are families where the child is a citizen and the parent is an immigrant, and they’re fearful of interacting with government,” Alker says. But such fears can only explain a small proportion of those who are uninsured, she notes.
So what's your goal here? My patience level is incredibly thin for people that are very clearly taking the article out of context to push some remarkably dumb agenta.
My point is, and remains, that you can't use figures like the one that headlines the article if it includes unrelated data like foreign nationals. The reasoning is because it ends with the exact situation we have now. What we know for sure is the US has a free health care system (ACA) for those who actually need it, I know because I've used it. What we don't know is how many children are uninsured, because the data they're relying on is worthless. Using fake data and then claiming "it's probably not off by much" doesn't contribute much to the overall discussion.
I'd also like to point out HN isn't really for political discussion, it's for technical discussion. This is a methodology issue in the article, not my personal opinions on US health care.
In fairness this does not work in practice. If a child is rushed to the hospital with a life threatening injury no US doctor is going to send them away. America is not really evil it just likes to LARP it.
As the very piece we're discussing mentions, the care in question for children is not emergency care. I assert America is evil, because these are active healthcare policy choices. We could fix this today with enough Congressional votes, it is a choice not to.
https://usafacts.org/just-the-facts/do-you-qualify/health/
https://usafacts.org/articles/how-will-the-obbb-impact-medic...
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF11912
https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-and-health-policy/5-key-fa...
https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/undocumented...
> Do undocumented immigrants qualify for federal healthcare benefits?
No. Undocumented immigrants do not have access to federally funded healthcare coverage, including Medicaid, Medicare, or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). They are also unable to purchase health insurance coverage from the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplace.