ICE is getting unprecedented access to Medicaid data
wired.com246 points by josefresco 13 hours ago
246 points by josefresco 13 hours ago
This just seems like a power grab to empower federal level personal thugs for the executive branch.
Most of these departments have rules about how they use our data. ICE now gobbles it all up and can use it without rules by a department that operates with little regard and lots of exceptions to typical protections for citizens afforded by the constitution.
The majority in SCOTUS does not seem to care (it’s ok as long as their guy does it). Whatever rules we thought there were seem to be out the window because someone magically moved data or ICE got to do it or so on ...
> lots of exceptions to typical protections for citizens afforded by the constitution
Almost the entire US constitution applies to non-citizens in the country, with some small exceptions like voting and holding public office.
You’re technically correct, but in the last few decades a great deal of legal scholarship has gone into convincing the relevant parties that this isn’t so.
All that matters is what the supreme court believes that the constitution and laws mean.
It's true that if you applied prior judicial standards that its crystal clear the constitution and bill of rights extend beyond just protecting citizens. Same for the law. However, with a lot of the recent rulings it seems that now "might makes right" and "if the president does it, it's not illegal".
Both the judicial and legislative bodies have ceded nearly all their power to the executive. We're in for a bumpy ride.
This started following 9/11 and every administration since has pushed hard for growing executive power. I agree it's sad the supreme court can be battered to slowly whittle down some fundamental ideas America was founded on.
9/11 super-charged it, but the project of putting all power in the presidency started with Nixon. "If the president does it, it's not illegal".
Reagan ramped it up by pulling some similar moves to what Trump is doing. The Chevron doctrine came from Reagan admin running the EPA into the ground.
I don't think it's ever been the case of "convincing" in my or my parents' lifetimes.
9/11 just gave the bigwigs the excuse to tell the masses that if you didn't agree you are a terrorist.
I'm not going further because its a quagmire.
Its very dangerous when it doesn't. Saying due process only applies to citizens, government can just label anyone they don't like a noncitizen and with no due process, those people will never be able to challenge it.
On paper, but the average citizen and current admin disagree. The check & balances also don't seem to work.
I'm an average citizen and I believe non-citizens have rights. And so do most of the people I know. So if you believe that, then recognize that that's just the consensus in your clique.
Average citizens are not on this platform.
Average citizens are commenting on YT and FB.
Most citizens are average and I don't see mass strikes while things are getting stripped away.
Does anything other than due process rights help for people facing deportation?
"Due process" is the most important right for everyone. It's what determines if someone should even be deported in the first place.
Without it, the executive gets to just say "that person shouldn't be here" and they can send them wherever the whims of the government are in the day.
Due process is how someone says "Hey government, you've made a mistake".
It isn't just due process. It's "I'm a US citizen, you can't legally deport me" Due process is what enables making that argument at all.
Certainly it’s important! But I’m wondering what other constitutional rights might prevent deportations. It seems like for non-citizens, due process alone will often be just a delaying action?
The 4th, the 8th, and the 9th amendments I'd say all should be applied in deportation actions.
4th because of "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures" A warrantless search and seizure seems to be pretty unconstitutional. (See: ICE rolling up to farms and home depots and arresting everyone brown there)
The 8th
> nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
It seems both cruel and unusual to imprison people in concentration camps without enough food or water. It further seems pretty cruel to send people to countries not of origin known to torture. (See SECOT and Alligator Alcatraz)
The 9th
> The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
This amendment is rarely applied which is a shame. It is the amendment that grants rights not listed by the constitution. It's what justifies the existence of human rights. It should not be controversial, but it seems like people should have the right to not be victims of genocide. Which is what mass deportation based on race ultimately is. (Homan is pretty open about race being the primary tool used to determine who's here illegally)
But beyond that, laid out in law is how deportation should function. That's where the actual process is laid out and that's what the executive is trying to avoid by rushing deportations.
100%. This also occurred to me. All of these things happening, in particular ICE, are blatantly unconstitutional. They are breaking the bill of rights. We are no longer living in a Republic, we are living in a Fascist state. It may not impact you now, but unless it is stopped, it will impact all of us. It doesn't matter what side you are on, if you would not want the opposite political side to do these things, you should not want your side to do them. Laws matter.
Doesn't the fact that they class immigration violations as civil not criminal changes quite a bit what actions the government is restricted by/constitutional protections?
There are some differences for illegal immigrants, though. For example they don't have the right to due process under expedited removal (passed by Bill Clinton in 1996).
How do you prove you are not an illegal immigrant when picked up off the street? Surely there must be some due process around the determination of your illegal status.
That’s not true. They have the right to due process, as enshrined in the constitution. Clinton did not suspend that right he merely limited specific legal options available.
This is a little misleading. Under Clinton, they could basically just turn them around at a port of entry. Eventually (2004) this was expanded to people within 100 miles of a border within 2 weeks of entering the country, and then in 2020 they _dramatically_ expanded this to people anyone who has been here for less than 2 years, and that has not been tested in court, really.
This is sort of a classic example of a slippery slope, FWIW. As soon as you deny anybody due process, the category of people that applies to will just constantly expand.
Now, there's basically nothing stopping immigration officials from immediately deporting anybody they want, citizen, non-citizen, illegal or legal immigrant.
> Now, there's basically nothing stopping immigration officials from immediately deporting anybody they want, citizen, non-citizen, illegal or legal immigrant.
What nonsense. We have the courts. There must be a valid determination made that a person entered illegally for expedited deportation to apply. Due process applies to that determination - if it is not made correctly then sue. But more importantly why on earth would it not be made correctly? If you can’t prove that you’re a US citizen then something is very wrong.
> There must be a valid determination made that a person entered illegally for expedited deportation to apply.
Are you arguing about the way it should be or making a statement about the way things currently are?
It’s tricky to argue it in court if you have already been deported to a prison in a foreign country.
Since medicade wasn't established by the constitution, how do resident aliens get coverage? Maybe they do, maybe they don't. I'd like to know.
If you want to go back to people dying in the streets because they are poor I guess that’s OK. But at some point it affects the health of everyone.
They also pay US taxes. They should benefit from those taxes like everyone else.
Some do.
If we're talking about federal Medicaid, no, they don't. That's citizens only. Some states like California extend the benefits of medicaid - but that's done with state funds. That's a states rights issue, not a federal issue.
Turns out the law is just two in the ink, one in the pinky finger in the air "I swear!". But in the end, the law is in people, the society is in people, not in paper, not in officials, not in institutions.
If the people carry something and change their minds and moods, have fun holding back that energy with a creaking dam made of paper. Even this Ice nightmare, was voted in democratic and will be one day, when the mood has swung again, pushed back by the people in some colorful revolution.
Getting access to Medicaid data for public health research is a giant pain in the ass with layers upon layers of red tape and IRBs and training about how you are allowed to handle it.
Only if it’s done in compliance. There was been little to show this administration follows the constitution, laws, or judicial orders let alone regulation. Especially when it comes to Stephen Miller there’s a significant “move fast and break the law” effort knowing judicial or legislative remedy can take a long time and is not assured given the penetration of captured justices and congressional independence. Especially in something like this where you have to establish standing, do discovery, etc, it’s an uphill battle to ensure compliance and the out of compliance stuff happens behind closed doors. With most of the federal government oversight functions either gutted or entirely captured by politically partisan sycophants, I would not hold my breath expecting any boundaries or relief.
This is what a real deep state looks like. “He who smelt it dealt it” seems to be a natural law.
Yes, I am assuming that ICE is not being held to the same (or any) standards and this is a real heap of bullshit
>Getting access to Medicaid data for public health research is a giant pain in the ass with layers upon layers of red tape and IRBs and training about how you are allowed to handle it.
Can you contextualize this comment? Are you saying it shouldnt be so difficult? Or that the government should have to jump through the same hoops? Or?
> The majority in SCOTUS does not seem to care
Well plain 'rules' are going to be firmly within the executive's discretion to change. So what you need is statutes.
Statutes might not help much though, due to the immunity/pardon hack. And we may even be seeing SCOTUS reexamine if the president is bound by statute.
This is fine.
> Most of these departments have rules about how they use our data
Yes, but law enforcement agencies can typically be granted access for investigations, so long as the information is used only for such investigations. This is how CSAM distributors are hunted down. They don't literally need to amass evidence for each and every suspect and then get a warrant: they have a legally recognized enforcement directive, and so can perform surveillance of information sources where that people breaking those laws can be caught. Or in this case, they may have imperfect information on a variety of actual suspects, but not enough to find them or build a case. Medicaid data may provide those clues.
(it’s ok as long as their guy does it)
You put that between parentheses as if it was just a detail, but it is the fundamental question that nobody is talking about: what happens after their guy is gone?
Are they really ok with president AOC getting all of Trump’s powers? Or do they secretly hope democracy in the U.S. comes to a halt?
If a democratic president is elected they will reverse their decisions until a GOP president is elected again.
I doubt that very much. I think what will happen is that the dems will run on doing that, get elected to do that, and then not do any of it, and nobody will really care or even remember. Everything will be cool because it’ll be a cool dem president and all the problems will be the republicans fault, just like obama.
> Or do they secretly hope democracy in the U.S. comes to a halt?
Hope? They're working on it. And they're not being particularly secretive about it.
can you share some of these plans to halt democracy?
Sure thing! If you go to Trump's official store (ridiculous statement on its own for a sitting president), you'll find a whole lot of "Trump 2028" merch.
I personally can't think of many ways to be more blatant than that.
We've seen the GOP reaction at a State level. When a Dem governor is about to take office, the GOP legislature passes sweeping bills to limit executive power and the about-to-be-former GOP Governor signs them.
Consider that you're already having to ask this question 6 months into a 4 year term, and what happened the last time their guy lost an election.
I’m pretty tuned in to the conservative water cooler, and I’ve heard three realistic theories on post-Trump executive power. To be clear, these are real opinions I’ve heard self-described Trump voters espouse—not my opinions:
1. Most of the federal judges and SCOTUS will overturn bits and pieces of executive power once a Democrat tries to use them. See Biden and school loan forgiveness. They firmly believe that Thomas and Alito will retire during this administration, and they hope Sotomayor or Kagan retires or dies. I’ve also heard noise about impeaching Barrett.
2. Democrats are too skittish to use executive power to do anything revolutionary with it. Even when they had a trifecta during the first Obama term they barely did anything with it.
3. Regardless of the other two points, it’s very unlikely for the Republicans to lose control of House and Senate again, and the Senate can revert to being effective when the executive is a Democrat. A Republican House can constantly submit articles of impeachment and a Democrat president will get bogged down dodging the accusations, even if they’re spurious.
> Democrats are too skittish to use executive power to do anything revolutionary with it. Even when they had a trifecta during the first Obama term they barely did anything with it.
This.
A lot of the focus these days is on SCOTUS, but most of what Trump is doing was already permitted by law for the executive branch well before he came into office. The real question is: Why didn't past presidents utilize that power that they clearly had?
> The real question is: Why didn't past presidents utilize that power that they clearly had?
The two parties have different platforms and have material differences in the way they govern, but the oligarchs that fund both sides of the aisle ultimately want the same thing - more money and power at the expense of the working class. Both sides are not the same, but both sides _are_ complicit.
That said, you'll notice that a lot of the whataboutism in this comments section tries to equivocate the policy of the two sides. It obviously false, but it's purposeful in that it's trying to bait responses that correct the record of the Democrats. A response that instead advocates for specific policy is much more productive and derails the attempt at making the conversation about red vs blue.
Conservatives really think they're going to keep Congress forever? They should look at how the "permanent Democratic majority" worked out.
Sorry, that should have said “lose control of both House & Senate,” i.e., they’ll probably control at least one.
It’s relatively easy for them to hold a close margin in the Senate, demographically speaking, and if internal migration patterns continue the number of “safely conservative” House districts will continue to rise.
> Are they really ok with president AOC getting all of Trump’s powers?
I can confidently predict that whatever out-the-arse-shadow-docket rulings SCOTUS have made for Trump will suddenly not apply to a Democratic president and the office will be hamstrung by executive limits pretty darn toot suite.
>Are they really ok with president AOC getting all of Trump’s powers? Or do they secretly hope democracy in the U.S. comes to a halt?
They aren't even being remotely secretive about it.
This isn't new at all and has been happening for decades, a continuous ratcheting up of Presidential and Executive Branch power since the dawn of the Cold War. Usually it's because of "national security," and it happens when both parties are in power. The march pretty much began with the National Security Act of 1947, though some might place it earlier with FDR and the New Deal. An argument can be made for both, with the left tending to blame the former and the right the latter. (I think the real answer is both to some extent but the National Security Act is the more significant of the two.)
An argument can be made after things like the second Iraq war that we have already entered the decadent empire phase of US history and the President effectively does have a great deal of dictatorial power. It's not supposed to be possible to wage a war like that without a congressional declaration, making such wars a pretty huge abdication of power by the legislative branch. If the President can just start a war on a whim, that power can be used to drag along the entire rest of the government.
Now, with ICE, we are establishing a lawless executive branch police force. This is just the unilateral power of the President to wage war coming home and being applied to domestic affairs. It will soon be possible, if it isn't already, for the President to order their own independent police to do anything, and if it is considered illegal the power of the pardon can be used to make that go away. The arbitrary power of the pardon is a pretty awesome power when you think about it.
When the ratchet gets far enough down this path we may indeed see a president remain in power forever like Xi Xinpeng. Trump may or may not be that person. If it's not him it might be the next, or the next. It could just as easily be a left-wing populist demagogue as a right-wing one depending on which way the winds happen to be blowing when the final ratchet click happens.
Rome continued to exist for quite some time after its Republic collapsed, but it was definitely the beginning of the end.
Indeed seems this way. Also consider the recent budget bill increased ICE's budget 3X and it's now more funded than the entire federal prison system.
This is roughly on the level of post Pearl Harbor internement of Japanese people, with potential to grow larger.
I think HIPAA always had a carve-out for LE. Trump is lawless, but this might not be.
> The majority in SCOTUS does not seem to care (it’s ok as long as their guy does it).
I doubt they'd care if a democratic president wanted to do the exact same thing...
Their job isn't to be benevolent.
Their job is to determine what is ACCORDING to the laws. The reality is, many legal protections only apply to US citizens - and it is EXPLICITLY for these reasons that they do.
The Privacy Act of 1974 applies only to citizens. The Patriot Act opened up a can of worms ripe for abuse that will probably never be sealed.
The executive branch can almost get away with murder by saying, "Well, we thought they were a terrorist, so..." Which does appear to be the defense they're trying to set up, saying anyone in any, way, shape or form related to Mexican gangs is a terrorist.
The Supreme Court doesn't really seem to be exceptionally awful.
They're obviously bias, and have been for a very long time, if you look at how they vote.
But the larger problem is that we have bad laws.
It's not the Supreme Court's job to override laws passed by congress because they're terrible or anti-American.
It's our job as voters to start caring about what matters.
> The reality is, many legal protections only apply to US citizens - and it is EXPLICITLY for these reasons that they do.
This is just explicitly not true in our constitution. If you're a textualist, you're not allowed to believe this - sorry.
> I doubt they'd care if a democratic president wanted to do the exact same thing...
Of course they would. They literally blocked Biden's student loan relief, calling it unconstitutional. These people are not there because they are exceptional legal scholars or because they established themselves as outstanding judges in their previous appointments. The six majority justices are there to help their side wield power, pure and simple. And they understand that part of that job is making it difficult for the other side to wield power. Because only their side is legitimate, you see.
> The Supreme Court doesn't really seem to be exceptionally awful.
The are exceptionally, extremely, extraordinarily awful. When the DC circuit court ruled on presidential immunity, legal scholars across the land pointed to the ruling as the probable last word, given how sterling the ruling was. Many were shocked that the Supreme Court even took the case up afterward. After all, what more was there to say? To have the SCOTUS overrule two centuries of established precedent in making the entire Executive branch above criminal law shocked just about everyone - this entirely for the purpose of keeping a single man out of jail.
> It's not the Supreme Court's job to override laws passed by congress because they're terrible or anti-American.
That is exactly their job, if said laws are unconstitutional.
Yes. The supreme court blocked student loan forgiveness because Congress did not appropriate funds for that purpose.
It's not their job to do things that are good or nice, it's to determine legality.
This sounded like a straight-forward HIPAA violation, but I checked. There's a carve out for LE.
You can see the bones of a stronger limit during drafting (as "required" by warrants), but then weakened to allow mere "administrative requests".
> Law Enforcement Purposes. Covered entities may disclose protected health information to law enforcement officials for law enforcement purposes under the following six circumstances, and subject to specified conditions: (1) as required by law (including court orders, court-ordered warrants, subpoenas) and administrative requests; (2) to identify or locate a suspect, fugitive, material witness, or missing person; (3) in response to a law enforcement official's request for information about a victim or suspected victim of a crime; (4) to alert law enforcement of a person's death, if the covered entity suspects that criminal activity caused the death; (5) when a covered entity believes that protected health information is evidence of a crime that occurred on its premises; and (6) by a covered health care provider in a medical emergency not occurring on its premises, when necessary to inform law enforcement about the commission and nature of a crime, the location of the crime or crime victims, and the perpetrator of the crime.
https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/laws-reg...
Additionally from the article the data seems limited to identification information and not medical information.
Language in the agreement says it will allow ICE to access personal
information such as home addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses, banking
data, and social security numbers. (Later on in the agreement, what ICE is
allowed to access is defined differently, specifying just “Medicaid
recipients” and their sex, ethnicity, and race but forgoing any mention of IP
or banking data.) The agreement is set to last two months. While the document
is dated July 9, it is only effective starting when both parties sign it,
which would indicate a 60-day span from July 15 to September 15.You still think this is just about immigrants? They are coming for the dissenters next, they will just make excuses as to why.
They are coming? They are already here. RE: What the president said about Rosie O'donnell last week. Norms have been eroded and we are now clearly in the laws-are-being-eroded territory.
Correct. Rosie is an American citizen born in the US and Trump threatened to "revoke" her citizenship.
We are all provisional citizens at this point.
Oh really? And charge them with what? The USA doesn't have vague laws around social harmony by which to prosecute people. This is exactly why it's so important to protect so called "hate speech".
How about they just black-bag her and she’s never heard from again? How will we prosecute that overreach and outright law breaking?
People are being violently kidnapped off the street by masked men and exiled to secret prisons with zero due process and you're over here worrying about charges and laws lol
The tendency to replace what is actually happening with some dark figment of the imagination is telling. Do you have real objections or just conspiracies?
This is something that the President is *literally talking about*: https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/18/us/us-citizenship-revocation-...
But, of course, you already know that. So why bother with the theatrics?
"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past." - Jean Paul Sartre.
What evidence do you have to believe that’s true?
the 1950s comes to mind...
… and 2/19/1942.
Two thirds of those required to report to camps for internment, per the Executive Order, were US citizens.
That was a Democrat president.
Who cares. Doesn't matter who did it, it matters that it happened and you're about to commit the same mistakes again. It matters that you let this slide just because he's your guy.
Deportations without due-process, for a start. Why not deprive you of due process, too?
Trump just said he's going to try to take Rosie O Donnell's citizenship away.
Do people still take his comments like that seriously?
Why wouldn't they? He's the president. As an official of the state he shouldn't say it if he doesn't mean it. The president isn't supposed to be fun or jokey
Yes? Nothing about the prospect of him revoking the citizenship of one of his longtime bugbears seems unlikely at this point. The fact that we're even discussing the "will he, won't he, who knows" right now should be alarming.
The fact that people are willing to shrug and say he’s just joking is honestly pretty astounding.
The people of Greenland do. I'm old enough to remember when that was considered just "one of his jokes".
How are we to know which official statements repeatedly made by the President in public are True?
> Do people still take his comments like that seriously?
Yes, because he has a pattern of staking out one extreme position and then doing something slightly less extreme; but both of which would have been unthinkable when laws and due process meant something.
And also, yes, because joking around is something you do on your own time and when you’re a child. Like not wanting your pilot to announce his intention to do some aerobatic maneuvers on an airline flight. Whether they carry it out or not is almost beside the point.
That's like asking: "Do people still take the elementary-school principal seriously when he keeps joking about having sex with the children?"
First, the situation itself is always serious, because because nobody in that kind of position should ever be "joking" about such a thing.
Second, this guy's not joking. A threat does not become a joke simply because it is weak/unlikely or delivered while chuckling.
He's given us more reason to take him seriously than not at this point, you can probably measure it objectively. He's practically perfected "just kidding... unless"
If you only take it seriously when it'll be about you, it will be too late.
[flagged]
Just to clarify, you're espousing the Great Replacement Theory here, correct?
That (conspiracy) theory pertains specifically to France, and Europe more generally w.r.t. Muslim immigration. It gets mentioned over here but it’s not a US thing.
I'm espousing the idea that one group of people can replace another group and that politicians can cynically exploit this fact for their own benefit.
Immigrants are the electorate and have always been. *They* are what make America great, not some racist, talentless bums who believe they are entitled to an entire nation by virtue of their ancestry.
No government agency should get access to any private data without the appropriate protocols in place. Even more so considering the many issues surrounding ICE and their actions already, this will not improve things. Let alone the moral problem of trying to deport people which have been used by American companies for cheap labour to build the nation they want and supposedly are. Now of course that is ignoring the ludicrous view that undocumented migrants are the key issue, as opposed to so many other home made issues in the US, such as unfair wealth disparity, and a lack of fundamental basic rights for citizens.
The inevitable end of all government compiled lists of people
It doesn't matter who compiles the lists anymore. Corporations will sell that data to the government (and anyone else willing to pay enough) or the government will march in and take it by force.
As long as lists of people are useful they will be created, and as long as our government is unaccountable to the people and the law those lists will be at risk of being abused by the state for other purposes.
Its the other way around, authoritarian governments will now compile even more and larger lists of everything they can possibly get from their citizens. North Korea would be proud of what this administration is doing.
I think they meant 'end' as in the 'ultimate destination' rather than 'conclusion'.
In many other countries, people would be asking "This is horrible, how can we bring down this leader, and how can we ensure that it never happens again?"
But here in glorious America, people are asking "This is inevitable, how can we starve the government more, so that it cannot hurt us when it eventually tries to?"
It's telling that, every time there's an election, we keep hearing complaints about who can vote, because its citizens decided that the government shouldn't keep track of who are its citizens and where they live. In most other countries it's the government's job to issue a photo ID to every citizen, but no, here in America that sounds too convenient and it must be some evil big-gov agenda.
Remind me which side of the Atlantic is throwing its citizens in jail for tweets?
Trump getting elected wasn’t inevitable. There were unusual events during the 2016 election campaign that could have resulted in a different outcome if their timing had been different.
What they're saying is that government lists get abused. That's true no matter who is in power.
Sorry but both sides are not the same.
Agreed. One side is actively fascist and the other side passively fascist.
You do not agree with me. You're still using the tired old "both sides" argument. The voting record proves you wrong.
Yep. Anyone saying that they are is being intellectually dishonest and likely trying to feel better about doing nothing
Billionaires paid for Hillary, dems couldn't be bothered to listen to the people. Took 0 responsibility for it. Just took her campaign war chest and dumped it into a media smear campaign.
> dems couldn't be bothered to listen to the people
No one was forced to vote for Clinton and nominating a loser of the primary would have set an awful precedent.
> Billionaires paid for Hillary, dems couldn't be bothered to listen to the people.
To be fair, other billionaires paid for this one; and this one is still not listening to the people.
That's fair. I want people to understand it's not about my tribe vs your tribe. If the goal is to get idiots like Trump out of Washington, you must first remove money from politics. Then even if "your guy" doesn't get elected, you at least have a decent specimen installed who your party can work with. No one of average intelligence can even see that as an option. For this reason, the DNC is just as responsible for his election as the utterly deranged MAGA avatar.
Client Side Scanning tried to hash your files to help the government find any "child predators" using iPhone.
You know, the same federal government that refused to assign a special prosecutor to the Epstein files. You can rest assured Apple and the Fed are very interested in protecting the children. Anyone who refuses to allow that sort of process is probably a criminal anyways, right?
But the lists were compiled before Trump took office. Countries that have experience with totalitarianism don't make those lists to begin with.
That's why in France, for example, it's illegal for the government to keep track of people's race or religion. When the Nazis occupied France they used such documents to figure out who the Jews were.
> it's illegal for the government to keep track of people's race
We don't even have the concept of “race”.
Countries that have experience with totalitarianism don't make those lists to begin with.
I’m pretty sure the German government has a list of people enrolled in the German socialized medical system.
Coupled with 150 billion USD for ICE, the same amount as for the Pentagon, what can go wrong?
The Pentagon’s budget is 900 billion per year. That 150bn ICE figure is over 4 years, so 37bn a year. You are wrong by a factor of 24x.
Great, thanks for correcting the figure, my bad. The news reported 150bn for Pentagon but it appears this is just the money for a few specific projects.
I attended Amazon Re:Invent a number of years ago and one of the keynote speakers was talking about providing medical information to law enforcement - the theory being that if they know you suffer from schizophrenia, for instance, the police would be informed of this and in theory less likely to murder you.
I found the whole idea very prone to abuse and posted about it on social media, and the whole thread flew into people fighting about Obamacare… but I still think I was right.
The older I get, the more I become a strong proponent of keeping data out of the hands of the people who can murder you without recourse.
That is the danger of central data collection. I know we like to pretend that federal departments are discrete units. At the end of the day the federal government owns the data. No subpoena needed if your boss already owns the data. You just have to ask nicely.
The problem is even worse when that data is in private hands. One of the most common ways the government gets data they couldn't justify subpoenaing themselves is to simply hand over cash to corporations who have already collected that data for other uses. for example: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/08/how-law-enforcement-ar...
I've never thought that controls prevented centralizing all our data, but incompetence and just bureaucratic bloat.
We are very, very far away from a state where the government doesn't know all about you. Im not sure what we should do about that fact. Im not simply arguing for an inevitable erosion of privacy on one end or soveriegn citizenship, for example, on the other. It's just that you would have to rewind way back. Social security, income taxes, etc.
In what world is this not overreach for ICE? It is positively authoritarian.
You just know this goes beyond illegal immigrants. This is some Gestapo shit right there.
The article states that the agreement claims compliance with a 2019 System of Records Notice, which it says allows the data to be used "to assist another federal or state agency."
The article notes that a former information security lead from the VA says the SORN needs to be updated for this specific ICE/CMS agreement and has not been. Clearly that fact is a disputed.
The ACLU argues that the sharing is only allowed if it contributes to the accuracy of Medicare or Medicaid, administers a federal health benefits program, or is necessary to implement a federally funded health benefits program. Im not sure if this it true (sharing only allowed in these cases) but if so it seems reasonable that detecting fraud would contribute to the accuracy and integrity of Medicaid. Furthermore, ICE does administer a federal health benefits program (IHSC [1]), so the basis for the ACLU's objection really seems unfounded, although the administration doesnt cite this basis and is quite upfront that its about identifying illegal aliens.
The Gestapo murdered millions. Please don’t throw around such callous and ignorant insults.
The Gestapo didn't start by murdering millions. They started by making lists.
I find it interesting that outside of the political headlines the surge in deportations remains lower than that during the Obama and Biden administrations.
Not trying to make a political statement here just pointing out oddities between reported data online perception.
Note* this data could be inaccurate ?
“ Deportation Numbers: While arrests have risen sharply, the administration's impact on actual deportation rates is still being assessed. According to the Migration Policy Institute, the Trump administration is on track to deport roughly half a million people this year, which is below the target of one million annually and less than the 685,000 recorded in fiscal year 2024 under President Joe Biden.”
When I played Deus Ex back in the early 2000's (now with GMDX 9), the game looked exaggerated, a blend between The X-Files and Neal Stephenson/Gibson.
It doesn't any more.
I've always felt DX was an ironically realistic vision of 2052 when you consider what the average person would be able to see.
Sure, the protagonist sees hidden bunkers with weird science, but the average person? It's hard find work, their votes don't seem to matter, there's no real privacy anymore, and nobody will honor the warranty on the little floor-cleaner robot.
The amount of precedent being set here for big government and overreach is amazing. I'm not really surprised though that Conservatives and other small/limited governemnt people worked to enact this massive overreach of power.
The GOP is not a party of small/limited government people. It's a party of people who want absolute control and use the language of small/limited government to gain power.
Both parties are the same. Democrats want to make it illegal to protect myself from a violent attacker, enact legislation designed to block poor people from starting businesses, buy votes by promising handouts. They are both filthy and dirty and serve corporations.
> Both parties are the same.
That is absolutely not true. They occupy very different philosophical spaces and have very different proclivities for extrajudicial acts.
> Democrats … buy votes by promising handouts
Didn’t Mr. Musk do something akin to this in Wisconsin?
> Democrats want to make it illegal to protect myself from a violent attacker.
I couldn’t speak for every elected Democrat but few, if any, stake out a position anywhere close to what you wrote.
> Democrats want to make it illegal to protect myself from a violent attacker
What an intellectually dishonest take.
They're both status quo loving elites, but to say they're both the same is complete nonsense. The scale of these ICE camps is something we haven't seen for nearly 100 years. The level of access given to Musk and DOGE is absolutely disgusting. The storming of the Capitol was embarrassing.
I'm all for enforcement of laws. I am very careful to obey the law because I know it will potentially ruin my life if I don't. If you want to change immigration law, that's another topic. But what happened was blue states let them in, created the problem, and now are using the predictable and preventable suffering to try to win voters. This is the second most popular move in their playbook, next to calling everyone a racist. They let their policies cause suffering and say "vote for us and we'll fix it, vote for them and the suffering continues". It's a scam.
Blue states aren't letting people into Texas. Texas is. They have a number of employers that rely on them.
This will result in thousands of people in cages for undetermined amounts of time with no due process. It's unconstitutional whether or not you're here legally. Democrats are not forcing Republicans to build outdoor prisons to house farm workers and their families.
Not to mention that there are a number of people getting caught up in this that are in the US legally, under asylum claims or birthright citizenship.
Democrats attempted to pass immigration reform twice in 2024 and Republicans shot it down for reasons including the asinine lack of border wall funding.
The impasse is largely that Democrats want to provide a reasonable path to citizenship for people who have already been living and working here (many of whom have been here for decades and have american-born children). Republicans will not budge and chose to impose suffering directly.
>Blue states aren't letting people into Texas. Texas is.
You're going to have to explain what you mean by that: people in the US have a right to move to any state they want, and the state they move to has little say in the matter. The most the government in Texas could do is instruct and incentivize police agencies in Texas to hold illegals till ICE can pick them up, but that only works when ICE is willing to pick them up and deport them.
(Yes, there are employers in Texas that benefit from employing illegal immigrants: those employers lobby the Federal government; they wouldn't bother lobbying the Texas state government.)
I'm responding directly to
> But what happened was blue states let them in
which doesn't make sense, there's like 1 "blue" state on the border
states didn't do anything to enable it, the federal government did, and the democrat controlled government tried to reform immigration multiple times
I don't understand why ICE would need access to Medicaid data. You need to be a citizen or lawful permanent resident to access that program, not to mention all the other additional criteria. The idea of illegal immigrants somehow bypassing all the checks and balances successfully en masse feels a little silly to me.
Just a quick check of the official website to try and get onto Medicaid in WA state shows that it requires a social security number and citizenship information: https://www.wahealthplanfinder.org/us/en/health-coverage/get...
They have a pamphlet available one more click away from the link you shared that gives detailed information on how undocumented immigrants can get free/reduced-cost health care, and what all of their options are: https://www.wahealthplanfinder.org/content/dam/wahbe-assets/...
This is not what the federal website for Medicaid says, though.
Couple of notes: Medicaid DOES cover emergency services for undocumented immigrants, to the tune of 16.2 billion dollars during the Biden administration. (Reference: https://budget.house.gov/imo/media/doc/cbo_on_medicaid_for_i...)
Just because it's illegal doesn't mean it isn't happening. From a May 25, 2025 article on the official CMS website: "The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced today increased federal oversight to stop states from misusing federal Medicaid dollars to cover health care for individuals who are in the country illegally. Under federal law, federal Medicaid funding is generally only available for emergency medical services for noncitizens with unsatisfactory immigration status who would otherwise be Medicaid-eligible, but some states have pushed the boundaries, putting taxpayers on the hook for benefits that are not allowed."
From this article: https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/press-releases/cms-increasing-o...
Emergency Medicaid is provided due to EMTALA passed in 1986. There's nothing illegal about it.
Both of those sources are just bullshit propaganda. There are no 'open borders'. You're just being manipulated.
They also are really poor about citing evidence for their claims. The best thing they've got is a vague '124 percent more' with no real figures, and 'some states have pushed boundaries'.
If they want to tighten policy around what qualifies as emergency care then be my guest. The rest of this is just pushing a bullshit narrative.
I didn't say anything about emergency medicaid being illegal. What I did was present evidence that illegal immigrants do, indeed, use Medicaid funds in the form of emergency care, and I presume those are the records that are now being reviewed by ICE. Your original claim was that illegal immigrants don't get Medicaid, but you neglected to consider emergency medicaid funds.
lets even just take him at his word. $16.2B, we are now about to spend 144b to stop that. very smart.
> I don't understand why ICE would need access to Medicaid data.
It’s a class war. Once they’ve run out of immigrants to harass and deport, they’ll be going after the poor.
They are:
- significantly raising taxes on imported goods - letting ACA subsidies expire - reducing access to medicaid - allowing medical debt on credit reports - resuming collections/garnishment for student loans - reducing options for student loan repayment / forgiveness
they're going after the poor
> they're going after the poor
That's just a bonus feature
The tariffs serve 2 purposes:
1. They can replace income taxes and protect the wealthy (per their reasoning)
2. They are a tool for power over other countries and a mechanism to compel them to pay personal tribute to The King of America™
You forgot the third purpose which is market manipulation so that they can make huge profits in the stock market for themselves and their friends whenever they feel like it.
I think it might even be more boring and straightforward than that.
Get power => cause market instability, make trades and bets on volatility (or have your friends do it) => offshore your gains
The instability also damages trust in the US which loss of trust has its own economic and geopolitical fallout, so big wins for the Putins of the world.
There's something called "Qualified Non-citizens", federal funding is prohibited for non-citizens but states could optionally cover it
https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/enrollment-strategies/down...
so ultimately there is some source of non-citizen data to be gleaned
Some states have different requirements for undocumented persons. Most states permit medicaid for emergency situations. Some permit it for pregnant people.
Are there any states where Medicaid funds "emergency situations" for people who are not otherwise eligible for Medicaid? I've never heard of that. EMTALA requires hospitals to treat anyone in emergency situations, but doesn't to my knowledge provide a mechanism to pay for those treatments. The patient still gets billed and hospital likely just doesn't get paid.
I don't think the funds get used. My understanding is that medicaid is administered by the states and can be expanded (at state expense). So the people covered by the expansion are still in the system.
My understanding from reading the federal website is that this would not be Medicaid, it would be a different program. So they would not be in the Medicaid database, right?
Several blue states expanded their medicaid programs to allow illegals. This was with the intention to pay for it with state dollars instead of federal dollars.
Some states even allow legal temporary visa visitors like students to sign up for their state level funded medicaid. NY is constitutionally required to do so.
ICE however is making a play to obtain all of that state level data.
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California gives medi-cal to undocumented migrants, paid for by the California general fund. The same program also administers federal medicaid funds for eligible Californians. It's a very different reality than you're trying to present.
That's not true, and it's why clinics are panicking over the new requirement to demonstrate citizenship. The theory was Federal monies were always largely denied to undocumented migrants, but in fact there was significant admixture between state and Federal funding and clinics were reimbursed out of Federal accounts for undocumented migrant care (because California just didn't track who was a citizen and who wasn't).
With that threatened there's a lot of worry here in California, especially about ERs being overrun by undocumented migrants seeking care and claiming it's an emergent issue (because where else can they go?).
I wasn't aware that CA intermingled the billing. That's a big fuck-up on their part, especially if they didn't make sure the enrollment data had eligibility information.
Medi-Cal gets 50% of its funding from Medicaid. California claims the money is separate, but since money is fungible, the federal money can be counted towards money spent on illegal aliens.
It's not a fixed chunk of money going into a pot labeled "medi-cal" that gets disbursed (where fungibility would be a very reasonable argument), but literally cost sharing the services associated with the eligible enrollees in each state.
Talking about the common case here, what happens is that the MCOs take money from the state to provide services based on enrollment data. The state takes the enrollment data, divides it up into "federally eligible" and "non-eligible" populations, then splits the costs of the eligible population with the federal government and pays the rest themselves. If more "non-eligible" people get services, the federal share of medicaid payments for MCOs doesn't go up.
Some of the other payments like disproportionate share support the facilities themselves, which undocumented immigrants indirectly benefit from by virtue of use. That's not a significant percentage of the overall though and not what anyone is talking about.
Maybe this is the reality he was trying to point out?
California’s $6 Billion Band-Aid: The Cost of Covering Illegal Immigrants
Last week it was announced that Governor Gavin Newsom is seeking a $3.44 billion loan from California’s general fund, as well as an immediate additional $2.8 billion in funding, to cover over-budget expenses incurred by our state’s Medi-Cal program.[1] Why is the program over budget and underfunded? There are a few factors that have gone into it, but the main reason comes down to the fact that the state expanded Medi-Cal to include coverage for illegal immigrants, and they underestimated how many of these participants would sign up to the program.[2]
https://www.thecaliforniaconversation.com/articles/californi...
I don't care. There are reasons we firewall private information from blanket surveillance by law enforcement. This is wrong.
What bastards?! How dare they help keep those migrants that are essential for many key jobs in the US healthy?!
Only an uncharitable reading of GP would find some implication that this is wrong (or right). Just impartial commenting on how benefits are indeed available to non-citizens.
Him using the word "illegal" makes me doubt the impartiality...
To play language cop, "undocumented" would be more neutral...
Illegal alien is the correct legal terminology used in immigration statutes. "Undocumented" is a confusing euphemism. Most illegal aliens have documentation from their country of origin, what they lack is legal authorization to live in the US.
Legally speaking, if you enter the country without entering through a port of entry? That is actually ILLEGAL. Therefore, its not a stretch to use the word "ILLEGAL ALIEN".
Just for reference:
8 U.S. Code § 1325 - Improper entry by alien
Improper time or place; avoidance of examination or inspection; misrepresentation and concealment of facts
Any alien who (1) enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers, or (2) eludes examination or inspection by immigration officers, or (3) attempts to enter or obtains entry to the United States by a willfully false or misleading representation or the willful concealment of a material fact, shall, for the first commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both, and, for a subsequent commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18, or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both.
It is not the human that is illegal, just because their entry into the country was.
Words matter. Specificity matters. Dehumanizing propaganda matters.
An illegal alien is a title / designation. Just like an illegal vendor, unregulated industry, or ineligible participant. Person first language is a good thing, but only recent political events have taken up the "No person is illegal" wordsmithing.
By moving the designator illegal from the activity to the person, you are criminalizing their being instead of their deed. It is a way of dehumanizing people.
Yes, I understand what you mean. And I tend to agree. I'm just making space for intent, and as much as words matter, intent also matters.
A person who entered the country illegally is not incorrectly (even if roughly) abbreviated as an "illegal alien", since alien is a designation for "person of a foreign country" in this case. It's true this can be misused, but it's also true I don't think OP misused it or intended to, and even if it could be interpreted as a rough slight, I'd prefer we took the charitable stance, evaluated intent in context, and stayed out of semantics and focused on the issue (in this case whether such individuals receive funded health care benefits).
That's really it. If you disagree and think this was the time to call that out, that's ok, I just disagree and don't have anything more to say on it. Cheers.
Everybody knows that illegal migrant means an migrant who is illegal present in the country.
You're only trying to say that it means "his humanity is against the law" to stigmatize people who care about law enforcement.
If the term "illegal migrant" offends them then that's a good thing, because you should be ashamed when you break the law.
When you call an illegal a "undocumented migrant" you're essentially downplaying the illegality of the act. It's just as bad as calling a rapist an "undocumented lover". You're de-stigmatizing breaking the law.
The law in this case is against the point of humans. We are an explorative species that should not be constricted by luck of birthplace.
No, no it wouldn't.
Undocumented immigrant is far from a neutral term. They haven't just forgotten their documents, or oops! the government hasn't gotten around to documenting them. They are in the country when they aren't supposed to.
If you really hate the term "illegal immigrant", fine then call them unauthorized immigrants, but the "no person is illegal" slogan is just a motte and balley.
No person is illegal as borders are arbitrary, enforced by other humans, not by any real natural divide, hence why they change.
Lots of people with no papers buy social security numbers so they can work legit jobs- and you could presumably get benefits too. Presumably they're looking for people who don't make sense- receiving benefits in two states, live in Minnesota but get benefits in Arizona, that sort of thing.
I live in AZ and your example is awful because we're literally full up on Minnesota snowbirds 6 months out of the year.
Imagine 7000 people per day being "disappeared" for the next 1200 days
(peak covid was 3000 deaths per day)
This country is going to get really horrific, really really fast
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/gop-gives-ice-massive-budg...
> Tom Homan, as well as Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller have made very clear that they intend on spending the billions in this bill. Tom Homan said this week that they want to arrest 7,000 people every day for the remainder of the administration
> Imagine 7000 people per day being "disappeared" for the next 1200 days
lol ppl here would be singing a different tune if 7000 people per day were entering this country on H1B visa.
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> Sending people back to their homes
That is NOT what is happening: https://archive.is/20250713011900/https://www.washingtonpost...
This is a ruling that allows the Trump admin to deport people to third countries when they are not able to deport them to their home country--either because their home country refuses to facilitate their return, or because they have specific legal rulings preventing their deportation to their home country. It doesn't apply in the overwhelming majority of cases. Pretending otherwise is deeply dishonest and is obviously intended to instill fear for political gain, which is just gross.
intended to instill fear for political gain, which is just gross
lmao that has never stopped MAGA politicians and mouthpieces from fearmongering about immigrants, anyone who's not white, the poor, sexual minorities, feminists, etc. etc.
Apparently the only remedy is to treat conservatives as they treat others.
OP's hysterical claim that 8.4 million people will be "disappeared" is not even remotely comparable with anything MAGA has claimed, as you well know.
20 million illegal immigrants in the US, it's an invasion, they're all military age men, the white population of this country is being replaced, they're sending rapists, they're sending murderers, etc. etc. MAGA has been about paranoia and propaganda directed at immigrants since the day Trump came down the escalator.
Yeah, we're just sending them to torture camps in 3rd world African countries where they'll probably starve. Very legal, very cool.
We've sent a handful of criminals (among them a murderer and a child rapist) to third countries after their own countries refused to take them back. It is deeply dishonest to pretend that this practice applies to everyone being deported.
They've asserted their authority to send people to another country that they came from, like sending people Liberia and South Sudan. So it looks like you are the one living in an echo chamber rather then reality.
Some criminals whose home countries refused to take them back were sent to third countries, ergo we're "disappearing" everyone who is deported? That's your position?
I'll never understand the inclination to voice an opinion based on a reality which is easily disproved with a few minutes or googling / reading actual news. Seems like there are three options: 1) You're uninformed; 2) You're misinformed; 3) You're acting in bad faith. If (1), perhaps don't speak on a subject you know nothing about, especially a subject which is severely harming others. If (2), then you should take your own advice regarding echo chambers. Not much to say about (3) other than it is best to avoid engaging people acting in bad faith.
May I familiarize you with the Madagascar Plan? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan
The Nazis were claiming they'd deport the Jews at first. It never goes directly to death camps, it's baby steps of normalization.
> "But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
- Milton Meyer, They Thought They Were Free - The Germans, 1933 - 1945
The "one neat trick" the Nazis did
was first declaring all Jews illegal immigrants
that was what opened to door to every creeping horror next
then they took away healthcare because they were illegal immigrants
then they took away the right to have jobs because...
they they limited where they could exist/shop/times of day in public because...
THEN they got to the concentration-camps
THEN they got to "well too many and bullets are too expensive/tedious, let's build gas ovens"
All it takes is "othering" a group of people by any characteristic and the majority of the rest of the population says "well that's not me so not worried"
Right now in America there thousands of people WITH GREEN CARDS (legal status) sitting in our concentration-camps, no criminal records, and they will be there for several months awaiting hearings before being deported.
Then you've got the teenage kids who have never lived in any other country that are being held in our concentration-camps and will be deported? To where?
I have no problem with it. Send them back from whence they came.
You think they'll stop just before they get to you?
They are literally going to deport everyone. There will only be a few people left hiding in the forests.
I don't know why you're joking - we're at a point where we would have to be willfully stupid to think this administration is only targeting undocumented people.
Most of this policy only harms US citizens.
They are deporting babies born here and have never lived anywhere else, some taken right out of the hospital
There are kids sitting right now in cages at Alligator Auschwitz without an adult for days and days and have never known any other country
Your parents were born in this country? How about their parents?
Because now they've run out of "criminals" they are putting people with legal status ("green cards") into the concentration-camps and when they run out of those next year who do you think they are going to keep busy with?
US Citizens have sat for days in prison before even given the chance to show citizenship, why don't you think that's going to happen to you eventually?
That's not what they're preparing to do. They're building open air prisons for tens of thousands of people. It would take years to deport that many people. If they fill these things it will be a humanitarian disaster.
I wonder if you'll feel the same when they come for you once they run out of easy scapegoats.
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Well you gotta be a citizen for Medicaid, so they shouldn't find anything interesting.
Right? /s
Many poor children are on Medicaid. If you are born in the US to an undocumented person then you are a citizen and eligible for Medicaid. So they can use this info to find the undocumented parents of these kids and deport and disappear them. Then the kids have to chose between staying with their family or leaving the only country that have ever known.
Oh good, so they are raiding databases that predominatly contain personal information on people they aren't looking for.
From TFA:
> Medicaid, state and federally government-funded health care coverage for the country’s poorest, is largely available only to some non-citizens, including refugees and asylum seekers, survivors of human trafficking, and permanent residents. Some states, like New York, provide Medicaid coverage for children and pregnant people, regardless of their immigration status. States report their Medicaid expenditures and data to the federal government, which reimburses them for some of the costs.
The Trump admin is aggressively deporting refugees and asylum seekers who entered legally.
California provides full coverage to undocumented migrants. This is who the administration is targeting.
As a related aside, Federally-funded California clinics are about to start requiring proof of citizenship. This is causing a panic.
Also, due to the massive cost of providing care to undocumented migrants, Newsom is about to freeze all registrations for Medi-Cal (so the message is get in now before the gates close). He's also proposing charging undocumented migrants a modest premium.
States can have supplements for non-citizens that don't use federal dollars and several do.
It’s not all state dollars though. There’s a Medicaid match for ACA expansion populations. The OBBB reduces that match by 10% for states that expanded the population to include unauthorized immigrants. In Oregon, to maintain that program Oregonians are going to have to pony up hundreds of millions more per year. Much of the country is fine with that.
Nobody believes those programs isolate state and federal funds effectively.
At the very least they're using federal funds for administrative costs.
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Most of the time when you submit paperwork for someone that is applying for a VISA here you'll provide information from a citizen/permanent resident, so they likely want to find the person that helped/sponsored your paperwork so they can get to you. Might be a good way to find bogus Medicaid fraud and strip you from your permanent residency or citizenship or just say you're abetting a criminal (someone living here illegaly), there are plenty of uses for this data if you're evil enough.
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"Illegals" can't use full Medicaid, they can only receive emergency care which hospitals are required to give by law. That's what that $4.5B figure is – emergency care, labor, delivery, etc. Furthermore, undocumented immigrants pay billions in taxes each year, including the payroll taxes that fund Medicaid and Medicare. Taxpayers aren't on the hook, because these immigrants are already paying in for services they can't even use.
So they can use (expensive) emergency care but also they are paying for (cheap) services they can’t even use? That’s some interesting logic. Clearly they can and do use some of these services.
I'd wager that long-term care such as chemotherapy is much more expensive than one-off emergency services like broken legs or going into labor.
> That’s some interesting logic.
Say what you mean.
> Clearly they can and do use some of these services.
I never said they don't – in fact I said the opposite of that.
Medicaid & Medicare Fraud is a big deal.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/09/how-medicare-and-medicaid-fr...
You know most of that is committed domestically, yes? Here's a famous example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Scott#Fraud_investigation...
The CEO of the company that committed this record-setting fraud became governor of Florida and is now a US Senator.
Personally, I'm ok paying 30 bucks a year to make sure fellow human beings in the US don't die of preventable causes in our streets.
Our country is massively in debt, and healthcare fraud is off the charts currently.
We don't need more people exploiting the system.
Legal immigrants pay into the system, and do their fair share.
The illegals broadly do not support federal expenses.
> Personally, I'm ok paying 30 bucks a year to make sure fellow human beings in the US don't die of preventable causes in our streets
EMTALA forces hospitals to treat emergent conditions regardless of ability to pay/status.
But what you are talking about as "preventable causes" sounds more like chronic conditions and universalized healthcare that does not meet the definition of emergent situations.
"The illegals" pay much more into the system than they take. This "fraud" is entirely imaginary.
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You're kidding, right? Rural (Republican) communities have been completely ravaged by the opioid crisis.
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> unprecedented does't necessarily mean illegal or nefarious.
Right, it means at a new level which has never been seen before.
Which is accurate. The headline didn’t claim illegal nor nefarious. The headline is accurate in a literal sense.
yes but top 2 comments are this
> ICE now gobbles it all up and can use it without rules
> No government agency should get access to any private data without the appropriate protocols in place.
And my own comment above is downvoted for some reason.
Probably because it was hypocritical. Conservative media is 99% ragebait, and when it comes to illegal immigration it's 99.9 ragebait, as are many public statements by the administration. Consider, for example, the regular claims that the US is being 'invaded' as if this were some military emergency.
never read conservative media. avoid like plague .
Understandable preference, but it's hard to be blind to it to the point of never even seeing headlines on news or social media sites. It also seems foolish to completely ignore the media diet consumed by about 1/3 of the population.
I often hear complaints from centrists about 'liberal echo chambers' (eg a spate of recent articles about Bluesky), but few of them seem to appreciate the scope and scale of the conservative media ecosystem, or its sheer cynicism. Consider this example, from an interview conducted 20 years ago: https://zfacts.com/zfacts.com/metaPage/lib/Weekly_Standard_M...
Back then, conservative media played the role of an upstart alternative to the staid and often smug mainstream establishment. 2 decades later, what used to be a cottage industry has become dominant in its sector. Media Matters is a left-leaning outlet, but this recent report of theirs is largely quantitive and its claims seem well-founded in empirical research: https://www.mediamatters.org/google/right-dominates-online-m...
https://www.mediamatters.org/google/right-dominates-online-m...
i guess i mispoke in my previous comment. Didn't know Joe Rogan was part of "conservative media" . I do listen to joe rogan sometimes because i do have lots of common interests like mma, ancient history , fitness ect ( although i am kind of bored of his repetitive takes like mma should happen in a basketball court )
I guess what is the equivalent left/democrat podcast to joe rogan ? I tried to listen to erza klien but that podcast always puts me in bad mood and the host indeed is "smug" . I never heard him admit to any of his bad qualities or his own selfishness like joe rogan. even his pious and fake intonation is so irritating to me.
btw i am a democrat and an immigrant.
> And my own comment above is downvoted for some reason.
Perhaps because you're defending, and assuming good faith behavior, from an organization which is committing violations against your fellow man on a daily basis?
i was going to respond to your comment but then i saw your comment history. yikes.
Presumably if it was illegal they would use that term and 'nefarious' isn't within editorial guidelines.
I'm not sure those are the threshold for being noteworthy. A novel application of medical payment information seems worth one's attention but you don't need to click through.
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You may be on the wrong side here.
The current administration won the national, popular vote.
"My side won, therefor anything it does is moral and correct."
I'm having trouble interpreting your statement any other way. And that statement is pretty vile.
The popular vote doesn't mean right.
What does? The word of God? Your opinion?
Please share.
In this scenario, very basic human decency and a simple understanding of cause and effect.
Will this have the consequences you hope for? Probably not. This isn't going to save anyone any money, and I don't think you have to be Albert Einstein to deduce that. Sometimes you're just... wrong, and that's that.
Let's not bring religion into it, but I am sure you are aware of leaders who were voted in that were/are unsuccessful or made horrific decisions or choices. Israel right now have leaders that wish to wipe out another group of people entirely, it doesn't make them right because they won the popular vote.
Post your full personal information and medical records, I suspect you of a crime.
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No, "panic" is what you feel when the American Gestapo tosses aside your Real ID and throws you in a basement without access to a lawyer.
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They have already detained many citizens. They are not following our standard laws.
When you slash the tires of an ICE vehicle, it doesn't matter if you're a citizen or not, you'll get arrested.
You mean unmarked vans, driven by plainclothes people with face coverings and no badges? How is anyone to know it's an ICE vehicle and not some random kidnapping, you donkey?
OK, is now a good time to get back to you? Bro?
https://apnews.com/article/us-army-veteran-immigration-raid-...
Not one of those agencies is disappearing people in broad daylight while being masked to hide their identities.
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