A decision under last year’s Medicare reform act to provide $1 billion in funding to hospitals offering emergency care to undocumented immigrants has been called a “breakthrough” but is drawing criticism from some hospital and civil rights groups that say a stipulation requiring hospitals to ask patients about their immigration status could discourage underserved populations from seeking care, the New York Times reports. The four-year program, which will provide $250 million annually beginning Oct. 1, seeks to offer relief to hospitals that are burdened by providing the free care—especially in states with large numbers of immigrants, such as Texas, California, Arizona, New York, and Illinois—but government officials say that in order to ensure proper use of the funding, hospitals must ascertain the immigration status of patients. Hospital executives, however, say the requirement poses a costly and “inherently difficult” challenge of “document[ing] the citizenship status of an undocumented person”; in addition to explicitly asking about patients’ status, hospitals are required to obtain copies of passports, visas, or border crossing cards, when available. A spokesperson from the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic civil rights organization, says the group is “extremely concerned” about the requirement because it believes “it will deter Latino communities from seeking emergency care” for fear of deportation. CMS officials, however, maintain that they have an obligation to prevent “inappropriate, excessive, or fraudulent payments” and note that data on individual patients will not be collected by the government under normal circumstances (Pear, 8/10).
