How Congress can kick illegal immigrants off Medicaid and save us billions

With one stroke, Congress can deliver on three of President Trump’s biggest priorities: Discourage illegal immigration, reform a broken welfare program and save taxpayers billions.It can all be done if Republicans roll back Medicaid for illegal aliens in their coming reconciliation bill. As we show in our new report for the Foundation for Government Accountability, migrants have been allowed and even encouraged to abuse Medicaid — at enormous cost to Americans.Medicaid was created for low-income citizens and lawful residents.

But for more than a decade, and especially under Joe Biden, states have corrupted the program by letting it cover illegal immigrants, too.This creates an obvious incentive to enter the US illegally, since foreigners know they can get health care on the taxpayers’ dime.It also pushes vulnerable Americans, including the elderly and people with disabilities, to the back of the line for care.Often, they’re stuck behind able-bodied adults who shouldn’t be in this country at all.Since 2020, according to information we’ve gleaned from 18 states, Medicaid expenditures on illegal aliens have grown by more than 75%.The Biden administration spent $16 billion on emergency services for this population — services that must be covered under federal law.

But federal and state taxpayers are spending billions more on non-emergency medical care.For years, states have allowed illegal aliens to sign up for Medicaid, pending verification of their citizenship or lawful immigration status — a grace window grounded in an assumption of good faith.But states weren’t prepared for the unprecedented influx of illegal migrants in the Biden years, which led to far more non-citizens than ever before applying for Medicaid.In the states that responded to our data requests, the number of Medicaid recipients who couldn’t prove their citizenship or lawful immigration status rose by more than 400% between 2020 and 2023.Making matters worse, Biden effectively r...