About 100,000 immigrants brought to the United States as children are expected to enroll in Affordable Care Act health insurance next year under a guideline announced Friday by the Biden administration.
The process took longer than promised to complete and fell short of Democratic President Joe Biden’s initial proposal to allow those immigrants to enroll in Medicaid, the health insurance program that virtually covers the countries poor people.
But it could provide thousands of people known as “Dreamers” with tax breaks when they sign up for coverage when marketplace enrollment in the Affordable Care Act opens Nov. 1, just days before the presidential election.
“I am proud of the contributions Dreamers have made to our country and am committed to providing the support Dreamers need to succeed,” Biden said in a statement Friday.
While it could help boost Biden’s appeal at a crucial time among Latinos who need to elect him to win the election, the move will undoubtedly lead to more presidential backlash from conservatives of the borders and colonial policies.
This move opens up the market for Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or any DACA applicants, many of whom are Latino.
Xavier Becerra, the state’s top health official, said Wednesday that many of those immigrants delayed getting care because they lacked coverage.
“They have a lot to spend and owe when they finally get care,” Becerra told reporters in a call to Our finances”.
Administration action changes the definition of “lawfully present” so that DACA participants can legally enroll in market exchanges.
At the time, President Barack Obama launched the DACA program to create asylum for those brought to the U.S. by their parents. illegally as children were protected and deported, allowing them to work in the country legally but “Dreamers” were still ineligible for health care government-sponsored insurance programs
The administration decided not to expand Medicaid eligibility to those immigrants after the proposal received more than 20,000 comments, officials said Wednesday. Those officials declined to explain why it took so long to finalize legislation first introduced last April. The delays meant that immigrants failed to register at the market in order to protect themselves this year.
At one point, 800,000 people were enrolled in DACA, though that number is now about 580,000. The government predicts that only 100,000 people will actually sign up because some will be able to get coverage through their office or otherwise. Some may not even be able to fund it through the market.
Other groups of immigrants, including refugees and people with temporarily protected status, are already eligible to buy insurance through the ACA, Obama’s 2010 health care law commonly referred to as the “Obamacare” marketplace.
The president also unveiled legislation last year aimed at preventing legal challenges to DACA; Former President Donald Trump ended it, and it has played back and forth in federal court. Last fall, a federal judge ruled that the current definition could continue, at least for a while.
“President Biden and I will do all we can to protect DACA, but this is only a temporary solution,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement.
