Posted March 13, 2025
The Trump administration has announced plans to roll back a Biden-era rule that expanded health care access under the Affordable Care Act to an estimated 100,000 uninsured people in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
The agency, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said in a statement late Monday it was following an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in February that bars people without permanent legal status from receiving services provided to U.S. citizens.
“Returning to this previous definition, in effect from 2010 to 2024, would ensure that taxpayer dollars to subsidize ACA coverage go only to lawfully present consumers who are eligible to enroll in subsidized coverage through the Marketplaces,” according to CMS.
Trump, in December, said he was open to working with Democrats to keep DACA recipients in the United States, but lawmakers remained skeptical. During the president’s first term, he tried to end DACA, but was blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court on the grounds that his administration did not follow proper rulemaking procedure.
Biden-era rule
The Biden administration issued a rule in 2023 that included DACA recipients in Medicaid and Affordable Care Act coverage. Medicaid is a joint federal-state program that provides health coverage to low-income Americans and people with disabilities.
The Trump executive order aims to “prevent taxpayer resources from acting as a magnet and fueling illegal immigration to the United States, and to ensure, to the maximum extent permitted by law, that no taxpayer-funded benefits go to unqualified aliens.”
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, or PRWORA, signed by then-President Bill Clinton, generally bars people without legal authorization in the United States from receiving federal public benefits.
That also includes certain groups of people with temporary legal status, such as DACA recipients, asylum applicants and those with Temporary Protected Status, or TPS.
Each year, DACA recipients work and earn nearly $27.9 billion, paying federal, state and local taxes, according to a study by the left- leaning think tank the Center for American Progress. The CAP study found that DACA recipients contribute nearly $2.1 billion to Social Security and Medicare, which they do not qualify for because they are not permanent legal residents.
Under the administration of President Joe Biden, the Department of Health and Human Services clarified that those who are “lawfully present” includes DACA recipients, so they can receive Affordable Care Act benefits.
Uninsured people
Of the roughly 550,000 DACA recipients, most have health care coverage through their work, but Biden officials at the time said the new rule would catch roughly 100,000 DACA recipients who did not have coverage.
The rule under the Biden administration allowed those uninsured DACA recipients to enroll in health coverage through a Health Insurance Marketplace plan or a state-run Basic Health Program, also called BHP, in the few states where those plans are available.
However, the rule under the Biden administration was already blocked in 19 states after a coalition of Republican attorneys general sued the Biden administration over it.
DACA recipients, often referred to as Dreamers, were brought into the U.S. without legal authorization when they were children. The Obama administration created the DACA program to allow those children to obtain driver’s licenses and work permits and be protected from deportation.
DACA recipients are currently awaiting the legal fate of the program in a case likely to head to the Supreme Court.
Ariana Figueroa is a Reporter for States Newsroom. This
article is republished from Colorado Newsline under a Creative Commons license. Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
