President Obama’s ambitious universal health care plan aims to provide affordable and accessible health care for all. The plan to cover the estimated 46.5 million uninsured, however, ignores the over thirty million non-citizens living in the United States. If the United States passes universal health care coverage, Congress should repeal the prohibitions of the Welfare Reform Act, extend Medicaid coverage to non-citizens, and allow non-citizens to purchase employer-based insurance coverage.
President Obama’s plan follows the lead of state universal health care legislation by retaining private, employer-sponsored insurance coverage and expanding the eligibility requirements of the Medicaid program. This strategy will not aid uninsured immigrants or overburdened states and hospitals, though, because current law excludes most non-citizens from nonemergency health care services.