The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Friday released a final rule ensuring that Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients are no longer excluded from coverage through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace.
The DACA program supports undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children and helps them live and work legally in the United States. Recipients of the program are also known as dreamers.
Under the final rule, effective November 1, eligible DACA recipients may enroll in a qualified health plan through the Marketplace or through a basic health plan. Those eligible to enroll in a Marketplace plan may also be eligible for financial assistance. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said 100,000 previously uninsured DACA recipients could gain coverage through the final rule.
According to CMS, the final rule comes at a time when DACA recipients are three times more likely to be uninsured compared to the general U.S. population.
“The Biden-Harris Administration believes that health care is a right, not a privilege, and that includes DACA recipients who have built their lives in the United States,” CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure said in a statement Explanation. “Today’s rule reduces the barriers for DACA recipients to obtain health insurance coverage and is an important step toward ensuring it is available and accessible to all Americans.”
CMS also made changes to the definition of “lawfully present” used to determine eligibility for a marketplace or basic health program. The changes “will benefit consumers by enabling CMS and states to more efficiently manage their programs for eligible noncitizens and ensure complete, accurate and consistent health insurance eligibility determinations and verification processes for these populations,” CMS said.
However, CMS has not changed the definition of “lawfully present” for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
The American Medical Association (AMA) supported the final rule.
“The AMA has supported expanding eligibility to purchase Affordable Care Act Marketplace coverage to DACA recipients and supporting the advancement of policies that address the unmet medical needs of unaccompanied undocumented minor children,” said Dr. Jesse Ehrenfeld, president of the AMA, said in a statement. “The AMA knows that expanding access and promoting health equity will improve population health and likely result in lower costs for American taxpayers because uninsured people are less likely to receive preventative or routine health screenings and may delay necessary medical care , which often leads to higher healthcare costs in the future.”
Ehrenfeld added that the AMA also supports expanding Medicaid/CHIP coverage to DACA recipients.
“While we welcome the resource limitations of state Medicaid agencies, we urge the administration to complete these important access expansions in future rulemaking and look forward to engaging in this and other actions that expand access to health care services, particularly for historically marginalized populations,” he said.
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