Biden Announces Plan to Expand Obamacare to Cover ‘Dreamers’

President Joe Biden announced Thursday that the Department of Health and Human Services will soon propose a rule amending the definition of “lawful presence” in order to extend Medicaid and Affordable Care Act coverage to DACA recipients.

There are hundreds of thousands of recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allows individuals brought unlawfully to the U.S. as children to remain here for a period and become eligible for a work permit. If the new HHS rule is approved, DACA recipients will be eligible for these health-care programs for the first time, with the White House noting it hopes to get it done by the end of the month.

DACA recipients will be able to apply for coverage through the Health Insurance Marketplace, where they may qualify for financial assistance based on income, and through their state Medicaid agency. Eligibility information will be verified electronically when individuals apply for coverage.

“President Biden and Vice President Harris believe that health care should be a right, not a privilege. Together, they promised to protect and strengthen the ACA and Medicaid, lowering costs and expanding coverage so that every American has the peace of mind that health insurance brings,” read the White House statement.

“They’re American in every way except on paper,” Biden said in a video released on Twitter.

An estimated 580,000 people were still enrolled in DACA at the end of last year, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. DACA recipients can work legally and must pay taxes, but their lack of full legal status means they are denied many benefits offered to citizens and foreigners here legally.

There has been a long-running fight about the legality of the DACA program as a whole. Late last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit allowed the program to continue despite its view that President Barack Obama had exceeded executive authority in instituting DACA. The Biden administration was barred from accepting new applications, but current recipients were allowed to remain protected by the program. Current recipients can also apply for renewals.

Biden’s new HHS move is expected to draw pushback from politicians and states concerned with border security and illegal immigration. While the federal government provides funding and guidelines for Medicaid, the program is administered by the states. North Carolina recently became the 40th to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, with Republicans in that state dropping their opposition.

Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) has already expressed his opposition to the administration’s move, saying: “Rewarding illegal immigration will bring more illegal immigration. This is an insult to American citizenship.”

Nevertheless, there remains bipartisan congressional desire to enact a permanent protection for DACA recipients, but congressional negotiations to do so continue to break down over concerns illegal immigration will worsen.

“We’ll continue to do what we can to protect Dreamers and push Congress to give them and their family members a pathway to citizenship,” Biden said.

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