Oregon
will spend more in its current budget period on free health care for
immigrants regardless of legal status than on state police by $500
million or more, according to state officials and budget documents.
Oregon officials expect to spend $1.5 billion in
combined state and federal taxpayer dollars on a program that offers
health benefits to illegal aliens from 2025 to 2027. They expect to
spend $717 million on Oregon State Police over the same period, the documents indicate.
The
state’s health agency, the Oregon Health Authority, said in an email to
the Daily Caller News Foundation that the state expects to allocate
$1.2 billion to the program — originally named “Cover All People” and
now called the “Healthier Oregon Program” (HOP). Oregon lays out budgets
in two-year “bienniums.”
The federal government will supply 25%
of the funding to provide health benefits to illegal aliens in Oregon,
the OHA told the DCNF.
The data emblematizes some of the Democratic
stronghold’s policy priorities — facilitating illegal immigrants’ access
to health care and reducing criminal crackdowns. These very policies
have touched off a government shutdown in Washington, D.C., and protests
in Portland.
Medicaid
— the joint federal-state program that traditionally provided health
services to children, pregnant mothers and disabled adults — formally bars illegal immigrants from receiving benefits.
But some blue states have innovated creative accounting methods
to extract federal dollars without the federal restrictions, according
to the Paragon Health Institute, a non-partisan policy research group.
Blue states will issue taxes on Medicaid insurers and providers, obtain a
bundle of federal matching dollars for those funds, then return the
taxed money to those institutions, the think tank points out.
Spending
on health services for illegal aliens in Oregon has climbed by at least
1100% since the program’s introduction roughly four years ago.
An Oregon report shows a steep jump in spending on its Medicaid expansion to immigrants regardless of legal status.
Lawmakers
first introduced the program in 2021 with a $100 million cap. State
Medicaid programs benefitted from increased federal matching dollars for
the COVID-19 pandemic at that time. The proposal grew out of a racial justice council convened by then-Gov. Kate Brown in 2020 and enjoyed support from a coalition
of managed care organizations, hospital groups, pro-abortion groups,
medical professional societies, unions and advocacy groups.
In
the intervening years, the national illegal immigration population
surged under President Joe Biden, the public health emergency ended, and
Oregon expanded eligibility to all age groups — causing the cost to
balloon.
In October 2024, OHA faced a $260 million budget shortfall, according to the Lund Report,
an Oregon-focused health news outlet. About 93,000 people had enrolled
in the state’s Medicaid expansion for immigrants regardless of legal
status, nearly double the state’s projection of 55,000 enrollees, the
report said.
Showdowns In DC, Portland
The policy
demands congressional Democrats in DC have named as a prerequisite for
reopening the government include dismantling barriers preventing
Medicaid dollars from flowing to illegal aliens.
Democrats’ counterproposal
to the “clean” continuing resolution (CR) preferred by Republicans to
end the government shutdown would unwind several reforms that President
Donald Trump signed into law via the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB)
in July.
These provisions included ending the disbursement of
higher federal Medicaid match dollars for the emergency care of illegal
aliens compared to traditional Medicaid recipients like children —
states received a 90% rate for illegal aliens compared to 50%
for American citizens — and closing accounting loopholes that allow federal funds to be shunted to state priorities like coverage for illegal immigrants.
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Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has estimated that the rollback of health reforms would cost roughly $192 billion.
In
Oregon, an illegal alien need not supply proof of long-term residency
in the state in order to receive the taxpayer-sponsored health benefits,
according to state resources.
According
to the OHA, the federal spending for Oregon’s illegal aliens only
covers emergency and pregnancy care that the federal government is
required to cover per U.S. law, echoing the arguments of Democratic
leaders who say illegal immigrants cannot access federal Medicaid
dollars outside of the emergency room.
However the OHA budget document shows the state will obtain federal dollars unfettered by federal rules through creative accounting too.
Oregon
pads its state pot of Medicaid funds, funds unfettered by federal rules
against dispersing it to illegal aliens, through what it describes as a
“tax,” but what really amounts to an accounting loophole. Oregon
“taxes” hospitals to obtain funding while tapping federal matching funds
to pay back the hospitals the “taxed” amount in full.
Meanwhile in Portland, nightly protests continue outside of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility.
Attorneys for the state of Oregon and city of Portland have argued in court against the deployment of the National Guard, saying that violent crime in Portland is significantly down.
But
on Wednesday, the Portland City Council heard testimony from several
small business owners who argued in support of an initiative to revive Portland storefronts amid break-ins, fires, graffiti, shoplifting, public drug use and visible mental health crises.
“I’ve
replaced a total of nine windows, three locks from attempted break-ins,
I’ve been spit on, I’ve been punched twice, once resulting in a black
eye. I had a man masturbating in my window. I’ve had a gun pulled on me
twice — once was last week. I’ve had a knife pulled on me,” said Steve
Cook, owner of Portland business Vinyl Resting Place. “When I’m found
dead in my shop, I’m gonna be like ‘I told you so.'”
