RIGHT SPEAK: Expanding ‘Obamacare’ to Illegal Immigrants Would Cost Billions: Federal Agency; Adding ‘Dreamers’ to Obamacare Will Cost At Least $7 Billion

Expanding ‘Obamacare’ to Illegal Immigrants Would Cost Billions: Federal Agency

Enabling illegal immigrants enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to receive health care under the Affordable Care Act will cost at least $7 billion a year, a federal agency said on June 24.

The Congressional Budget Office, with help from the Joint Committee on Taxation, crunched the numbers at the request of two members of Congress, after the federal government announced in May that it would let DACA recipients receive health coverage under the act, more commonly known as Obamacare.

The analysts projected that, on average, about 110,000 DACA recipients would enroll to receive health care because of the new rule. If that holds, then it will cost taxpayers $7 billion per year from 2025 through 2034, according to the analysts’ calculations.

“The costs from additional marketplace enrollment are offset slightly in the agencies’ estimates by decreases in emergency Medicaid spending as people become eligible to claim the credit,” the budget office said in a letter to Reps. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) and Jason Smith (R-Mo.), the members who requested the estimate.

Illegal immigrants who are brought to the United States at a young age are eligible for DACA, which, like Obamacare, was created while President Barack Obama was in office. While in the DACA program, illegal immigrants are shielded from deportation. Some 528,300 immigrants were active in the DACA program as of March 31, according to the government.

Illegal immigrants usually cannot receive federal health care coverage, and the Affordable Care Act states that only noncitizens who are “lawfully present” can enroll in coverage. But the new rule from the Department of Health and Human Services makes DACA recipients eligible starting on Nov. 1 for the health insurance marketplace and basic health programs by stating that the recipients are lawfully present for insurance purposes. --->READ MORE HERE

AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana

Adding ‘Dreamers’ to Obamacare will cost at least $7 billion:

Taxpayers will shell out at least $7 billion for President Biden’s policy allowing illegal immigrant “Dreamers” here under the DACA program to sign up for Obamacare payments, according to a new analysis Monday by the Congressional Budget Office.

That could rise to as much as $9 billion over a decade if Congress makes certain tax credits permanent. The government would spend another $2 billion on debt service payments, bringing the potential cost to $11 billion.

CBO figured about 110,000 illegal immigrants here under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program will sign up for subsidized coverage under the new Biden policy.

That would rise to 140,000 if Congress were to extend a pandemic-era tax credit.

CBO said the government would save some money on lower emergency care costs for DACA recipients, but it’s far outweighed by the higher costs of subsidizing their coverage.