Estimated Impacts of the Proposed Public Charge Rule on Immigrants and Medicaid

"Estimated Impacts of the Proposed Public Charge Rule on Immigrants and Medicaid" provides an analysis of the potential impact of the Trump Administration’s proposed rule changes regarding what types of support can be included in determinations of how likely it is for someone applying for Legal Permanent Residency (LPR) to become a public charge at some point. Previously, housing, nutrition and health programs (including Medicaid) had been excluded from the analysis of the applicant’s economic vulnerability. Including those programs under the proposed rule would mean that 94 percent of non-citizens looking for LPR status would have at least one characteristic that could lead to their application being denied. The authors suggest that in order to maintain eligibility for LPR, non-citizen immigrants will avoid getting any support from fear of being considered a public charge. For example, they estimate that between 2.1 to 4.9 million Medicaid enrollees would disenroll, even when there may be US born children in the household that are eligible for services. This massive loss of healthcare will lead to worse health outcomes not only for those who are disenrolling, but also for their families and communities. The authors also stress that this will in turn affect housing security, educational attainment and economic productivity. In this way, perceptions of the new regulations will be just as consequential as the rule changes themselves, and the negative impacts will not be limited to members of the immigrant community that are the target of the law. (Erik Jacobson, Montclair State University)

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