The Census Bureau, Gallup, the Congressional Budget Office, and the Centers for Disease Control all agree that the number of uninsured Americans has grown under Donald Trump—and experts are linking that to his administration’s anti-Latino and anti-immigrant policies, such as the discriminatory “public charge” rule change.
“Latinos in particular made the biggest gains in access to insurance under Obamacare over the last six years,” research organization Latino Decisions said earlier this year, but a new report from the Census Bureau notes, “Hispanics were the only major racial and ethnic category with a significant increase in their uninsured rate. It rose by 1.6 percentage points in 2018, with nearly 18% lacking coverage. There was no significant change in health insurance for non-Hispanic whites, blacks and Asians.”
“Some of the biggest declines in coverage are coming among Latinos and noncitizens,” said Larry Levitt of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. “These declines in coverage are coming at a time when the Trump administration has tried to curb immigration and discourage immigrants from using public benefits like Medicaid.”
The administration’s Stephen Miller-led “public charge” rule change, which attacked working families by making it easier to deny green cards to immigrants who are legally accessing, or are likely to access, public benefits, was having devastating effects even before it was published, with some parents pulling their eligible U.S. citizen kids from programs out of fear. “The public charge reg has been in the works for a year and a half," Miller scolded officials in one email. "This is time we don't have. I don't care what you need to do to finish it on time."
He got what he wanted. “People are interpreting ‘public charge’ broadly and even though their kids are eligible for Medicaid because they were born in this country, they are staying away,” said Katherine Hempstead of the nonpartisan Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “Children’s coverage often follows their parents’ status,” the AP wrote. A number of states have already sued the administration over the rule change, arguing, “It will harm our communities, schools, and workplaces by weaponizing essential healthcare, housing, and nutrition programs.”