FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The White House is exposing Democrats’ efforts to give illegal immigrants access to health care under the Biden administration, according to a memo obtained by The Daily Signal. “This memo discusses specific actions taken by the Biden administration to provide Obamacare and Medicaid benefits to illegal immigrants,” the document says. President Donald Trump’s administration issued the memo on the seventh day of the government shutdown, which Republicans say has been caused by Senate Democrats’ unwillingness to pass a clean budgetary continuing resolution that doesn’t restore funding of health care for illegal immigrants. The memo describes “how federal resources were abused by the Biden administration and Democratic states to provide health care for illegal immigrants.” According to the memo, “14 states and the District of Columbia operate ‘state-funded’ health care programs for illegal immigrants.” They are California, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, and Washington. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is currently reviewing and auditing eight of those states. The memo says it is well-documented that California exploited a federal loophole to fund its “state- funded” Medicaid program for illegal immigrants, but “a broader program-integrity concern persists with the existence of such programs in states that operate them.” For example, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General found that in less than one year, California had improperly claimed $52.7 million in federal Medicaid funds for coverage of illegal immigrants. That occurred because California did not appropriately segregate funding for emergency Medicaid from non-emergency Medicaid. The White House named Obamacare allowing states to waive certain provisions of the law as another example of a Democrat policy enabling illegal immigrants to get federally funded health care. “The Biden administration approved numerous state waivers to allow illegal immigrants access to health insurance coverage, waiving the statutory prohibition against illegal immigrants enrolling in Obamacare plans, thus expanding health care to illegal immigrants,” the memo outlines. The waivers allow federal dollars to be used to subsidize coverage for illegal immigrants both directly and indirectly, the White House says. States with waivers that reduce federal spending on Obamacare subsidies receive funds known as “pass-through” payments. These are intended to represent the difference between federal spending on Obamacare subsidies in the absence of the waiver and federal spending on Obamacare subsidies under the waiver. However, federal pass-through payments have been used to provide subsidies for the illegal immigrants made eligible for coverage under a waiver, the memo says. “In addition, when federal ‘pass-through’ funds are used by a state through programs intended to buy down the cost of premiums for all exchange consumers, like reinsurance programs, illegal immigrants with plans benefiting from such premium reductions are effectively receiving a premium subsidy with federal funds,” according to the memo. The White House listed instances in the Democrat-run states of Colorado, Maryland, and Washington as examples of waivers providing health care benefits to illegal immigrants. Medicaid spending on emergency services for illegal immigrants nearly tripled under the Biden administration, growing from $3.07 billion in fiscal year 2020 to $9.12 billion in fiscal year 2024, the memo says. Medicaid law requires states to provide a 90-day grace period, known as a “reasonable opportunity period,” for states to verify the immigration status of applicants into the program. While states traditionally had the ability to limit the number of reasonable opportunity periods an individual could receive before verifying their immigration status to remain eligible for Medicaid benefits, the memo says, President Joe Biden prevented states from limiting the number of reasonable opportunity periods an individual may receive if they reapply for Medicaid at the end of each period, according to the White House. “This action prevented states from requiring Medicaid applicants to verify their immigration status, creating an easily exploitable loophole through which illegal immigrants could receive federally funded coverage,” the memo says. The post EXCLUSIVE: White House Memo Exposes Democrats’ History of Pushing Health Care for Illegal Immigrants appeared first on The Daily Signal.