By Harold Pease, Ph. D.
When Congresswoman Maxine Waters was recently asked by a reporter whether “Democrats are willing to shut down the U.S. government to prioritize healthcare for illegal immigrants,” she partially avoided the question by saying “Democrats are demanding healthcare for everybody.” Which, of course, would include illegals. (“Maxine Waters Gets TESTY When Asked if Democrats Are Shutting Down Government Over Healthcare for Illegals, by Mike LaChance, Gateway Pundit, Sep. 30, 2025). Democrats are demanding that American taxpayers foot the bill for healthcare for illegal immigrants.
In the Democrat presidential primary debate (June 27, 2019) the moderator asked the candidates to raise their hands if their health-care plans would cover undocumented immigrants—the illegals. Of the 20 Democrat candidates seeking the presidency 19 raised their hand. At this moment Democrat Party leadership acknowledged that they would use their influence and taxpayer monies for healthcare for illegals. Non-U.S. citizens suddenly became their primary constituents and have remained so since.
Theoretically everyone in the world that invades America can expect free or subsidized everything at the American taxpayer’s expense—and they came in the millions with Biden’s encouragement, not primarily escaping tyranny, as heretofore, but for free things. Newsmax host Rob Finnerty reported that the government shutdown revealed “59% of all aliens are collecting food stamps.” The Affordable Care Act (ACA) “explicitly prohibits undocumented immigrants from buying coverage on the federal exchanges, even at full price” and in other places it seems to invite their participation (X22 Report, hence fourth not cited, Ep. 3762b, Oct. 28, 2025, 1:03:00). If food stamps are available to them it’s only a matter of time before healthcare would be as well.
The Heritage Foundation told us in 2009 that the bill in the House, then called, H.R 3962 was written to that end. They provided the following major talking points from it. 1) “H.R. 3962 does not seek to deter or prevent illegal immigration, but rather to support and subsidize it. It would deliberately permit illegal aliens to participate in the government health insurance exchange and in the public option insurance program. Illegal immigrants are nominally barred from receiving health care ‘affordability credits’ and most regular Medicaid benefits, but verification procedures are weak and subject to fraud.”•2) “Nearly 400,000 illegal immigrant women give birth inside the U.S. each year; under H.R. 3962, many of these births would be fully covered by U.S. taxpayers through the Medicaid program.” 3) “All limitations on benefits provided to illegal immigrants under health care reform legislation are deceptive. The President [then Barack Obama] and the congressional [Democrat] leadership clearly intend these limits to be only temporary, to be overturned by amnesty or ‘comprehensive immigration reform’ legislation to be introduced next spring.” Virtually everything they predicted happened.
Though subject to fraud and intended to include healthcare for illegals from the beginning, despite assurances from President Obama otherwise, new documents attest that Obamacare goes to illegals in at least six blue states. This most stunning and authoritative report was issued October 31, 2025, by Mehmet Oz, the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Dr. Oz reported, “Based on our initial set of audits, more than $1B of federal taxpayer dollars were being spent on funding Medicaid for illegal immigrants…The truth is that the federal law is supposed to prohibit federal Medicaid dollars from being used to cover illegal immigrants. It does permit states to use Medicaid dollars for emergency treatment, regardless of patient citizenship or immigration status. States can also legally build Medicaid programs for illegal immigrants using their own state tax dollars, so long as no federal tax dollars are used but that did not stop Democrats from going even further by breaking federal law to give illegal immigrants federal Medicaid dollars meant for American citizens.”
Dr. Oz continues, “Earlier this year, the CMS team began auditing state Medicaid programs to ensure that they were following the law and not spending any federal tax dollars on illegal immigrants outside of emergency Medicaid. What we found was shocking. In a preliminary review of six states are found these states improperly using federal dollars for their allegedly state funded programs and provided coverage to individuals including some with criminal records of murder and assault… California $1.3 billion, DC $2 million, Illinois $29 million, Washington $2 million, Colorado $1.5 million, Oregon $5.4 million. The states were notified and many have begun refunding the money. But what if we had never ask? Whether willful or not the states’ conduct highlight a terrifying reality. American taxpayers have been footing the bill for illegal immigrants’ Medicaid coverage despite many Democrats and the media insisting otherwise” (Ep. 3765b, Nov. 2, 2025, 48:31).
Using federal funds may be universal among Democrat states. Secretary Brooke Rollins said, “On my first day at USDA, we told every state to send their SNAP data so we could make sure illegal immigrants aren’t getting benefits meant for American families. Twenty-nine states stepped up, twenty-one blue states refused – and two sued us for asking!” The 21 states that refused to send their SNAP data to the USDA were named. They were the Democrat lead states” (Ep. 3766b, Nov.3, 2025, 1:10:21). These too are likely unlawfully giving healthcare to illegals.
No matter how it is calculated Democrats giving healthcare to their illegal constituents played a big role in the longest government shut down in U.S. history. What did the Democrats give up regarding the shutdown. They were forced to give up the guaranteed ACA (Obamacare) subsidy extension making it possible to end this disastrous and failed program for illegals and likely as well for actual citizens of this country (Ep. 3771b, Nov. 10, 2025, 57:00). Still, the shutdown was primarily to get healthcare for illegals as admitted to above by Democrat Congresswoman Maxine Waters.
Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution and a syndicated columnist on current events. Read his weekly columns at www.LibertyUnderFire.org Column #846.
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