GOP Stopped Your Taxes From Paying Noncitizens’ Medical Bills

Thousands of noncitizens are losing eligibility Thursday for federally funded Medicaid thanks to President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, which was passed by Republicans and opposed by Democrats.

It’s difficult to understand why the federal government admitted so many people who needed American taxpayers to support them in the first place. But what’s not difficult is understanding why Democrats unanimously opposed this legislation — and why it matters for the midterms.

The One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) Act tightened eligibility requirements for Medicaid coverage. Medicaid is a taxpayer-funded health care program that should be for helping poor and disabled Americans. Instead, the policy has been used to pay for health care for hundreds of thousands of foreigners (yes, noncitizens).

Under the new eligibility requirements, refugees and asylees who do not have green cards will no longer be eligible for Medicaid covered by federal tax dollars, though states can individually choose to provide the coverage themselves. (Lawful permanent residents, minors, Cuban and Haitian migrants, and those covered by the Compacts of Free Association are eligible should they meet the other requirements).

According to KFF Health News, Florida “identified nearly 177,000 immigrants who would no longer qualify for the state’s Medicaid program starting in October,” Arizona “predicts nearly 28,000 could lose eligibility,” New Jersey “expects 15,000 to 25,000 of its noncitizen residents to lose their Medicaid coverage,” while North Carolina and Washington estimate the ineligibility of 29,000 and 11,000, respectively. (Notably, these noncitizens can still qualify for medical care under Emergency Medicaid, which is an entirely separate issue.)

The program has allowed foreigners to come here and force taxpayers to pay for their health issues while many Americans themselves struggle with rising health care costs. Take for example one refugee identified by KFF Health News as Ahin, who came to the U.S. in 2024.

“I came here to live a better life,” Ahin said. But “soon after arriving in the U.S., she developed severe abdominal pain that required intestinal surgery. Those costs, along with ongoing visits to specialists, were covered by Medicaid.”

The costs, however, were actually “covered” by Americans. Medicaid “has also been vital to her mother, who has asthma,” KFF Health News reported.

In other words, two foreigners came to this country and began milking a system that should be solely for the benefit of citizens. Also of note is that neither one of these women seemingly broke the law in order to get American-funded healthcare. They were ostensibly here “legally,” which only exposes yet another problem with immigration — getting into our country suddenly entitles you to a host of benefits.

Republicans used their congressional majority to fix eligibility requirements so that Americans wouldn’t be expected to bear the burden of taking care of every Third World foreigner who lands on our soil. Democrats opposed the legislation that included these eligibility fixes. And what’s clear is that these much needed restrictions only became law because Republicans had the votes to pass them. Had Democrats controlled Congress, Americans would still be expected to foot these bills, which is why this policy change matters far beyond Medicaid.

Voters heading into the midterm elections should be asking themselves who Democrats will put first if given power again because right now, it seems Democrats’ first priority is foreigners.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal promised in January that “As soon as we get the gavels back, we have to dismantle DHS, ICE and CBP.”

Sens. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said just last month that admitting “a thoughtful number of refugees” is our “international obligation” and that we, as a nation, “must restart refugee resettlement to a respectable and honorable level.” Their statement came in response to the Trump administration saying it would limit the refugee cap to roughly 17,500 refugees from South Africa in the next fiscal year.

While the trio didn’t explicitly state what a “respectable and honorable level” constitutes, perhaps the Biden administration’s policy of welcoming more than 100,000 refugees for fiscal year 2024 is the new Democrat standard.

In other words, Democrats are foreigner first, Americans last. They care little about the effects of mass legal and illegal migration and have gone so far as to suggest that upon taking power, they will do what they can to prioritize foreigners — even though Americans voted for Trump, who ran overwhelmingly on mass deportations and cracking down on all immigration. This is why the midterms matter so much.

Gas prices are insanely high. They suck. There’s no sugarcoating that the Iran War has strained Americans financially at the pump. But gas prices can — and do — change. Not to mention that Democrats, for all their talk about caring about lowering them, have a poor track record of success in doing so. Just look at California, a Democrat-run state with the highest gas prices in the country thanks to Democrat policies. Democrats may run on affordability and lowering gas prices, but that doesn’t mean they will actually do it.

What they will do, what they’ve guaranteed, is open the border. Flooding the country with Third World foreigners and forcing Americans to foot the bill for all of it. Democrats’ opposition to the One Big Beautiful Bill — which will help save Americans from footing the bill for foreigners — proves that they are not going to be putting America first if they win this November.

Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2