Washington, D.C. – Today the Biden administration announced that the Department of Health and Human Services will propose a rule expanding eligibility that would allow Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients to enroll in health care coverage through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace and Medicaid. A 2021 survey of people with DACA found that 34 percent are living without any kind of health insurance, compared to ten percent of the total population. Now, hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients will have access to affordable health care.
Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, Deputy Director of Federal Advocacy of United We Dream, said:
“Today’s news is a major victory for DACA recipients and their families that is the direct result of years of tenacious organizing. Having good reliable health care is a human need, and this rule change will mean that more people will have the life saving health care coverage they need to take care of themselves and their families. We all contribute to the health care programs so it was unconscionable that DACA recipients were barred from eligibility for ACA, Medicaid and other government subsidized health care. We celebrate President Biden and the Department of Health and Human Services for heeding our demands to remove this cruel and unnecessary bar on eligibility for hundreds of thousands of young people. While this is an important step, the DACA program continues to be under attack, and millions of other undocumented people without DACA still lack access to life saving health care. While attacks on DACA could take it back to the Supreme Court, we need President Biden to protect DACA recipients and immigrant youth without DACA. We also need Congress to do its job and pass a path to citizenship for all 11 million undocumented people.”
