Democrats have spent months railing against Medicaid cuts in the Big, Beautiful Bill, accusing Republicans of gutting the program and harming recipients. But the bill simply adds work requirements for able-bodied adults to continue receiving benefits, while eliminating fraud and waste in the program, such as people who are on the rolls in multiple states. But perhaps the biggest reform is removing illegal aliens from the rolls. An estimated 1.4 million current Medicaid enrollees do not meet citizenship or immigration status requirements. To that end, the Trump administration is now ordering states to remove those who don't match up with federal citizenship databases.
While Democrats once upon a time tried to claim there were no illegal aliens on Social Security or Medicaid, that has turned out to be demonstrably untrue. President Trump recently announced his administration has removed 275,000 illegals from the Social Security rolls. At the same time, Democrats are now openly complaining about illegals being kicked off of Medicaid. Ira Mehlman with the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) says this is long overdue. "With the limited benefits that are available, the priority should be on covering American citizens who are in need of these benefits, and making it clear to people that if you are in the country illegally, you are not going to be able to get access to these benefits," he tells KTRH.
Cutting illegals off Medicaid not only saves money and helps keep the program solvent, but Mehlman argues it also serves as a further deterrent to future illegal immigration. "That is the most effective form of law enforcement, to convince people not to be breaking the laws in the first place," he says. "And this is sending the signal that if you're in the country illegally, you're not going to benefit by remaining."