An alliance of 20 state Attorneys General is filing a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., because of the alleged unlawful disclosure of the Medicaid information of millions of people to DHS deportation officials.
In the 1965 Medicaid Act, the Medicaid program was created to offer medical insurance to individuals with lower income and underserved groups of the population, which includes children, the elderly, pregnant women, and people with disabilities. States are allowed to create and implement their health plans and have their eligibility criteria and coverage, as long as they meet government statutory standards. At present, over 78 million Americans are enjoying Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) throughout the U.S.
Recently, a report by the Associated Press (AP) revealed that the Trump administration had shared with the DHS the personal information of countless Medicaid recipients. The AP got the information from an internal memo and email messages that show Medicaid officials tried to stop the data transfer because of legal and ethical issues. However, they failed to stop it as two advisors to the HHS Secretary ordered the data transfer. According to the report, the officials at the HHS Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) had to comply with the directive in 54 minutes.
When Biden was still the president, there were programs in seven U.S. states and D.C. allowing immigrants (who are not legal U.S. residents) to join the state’s Medicaid program and get all the benefits paid for by the state’s taxpayers. The transferred data involved the Medicaid recipients in Illinois, California, Washington State, and D.C. The other states with the above-mentioned programs include Colorado, New York, Minnesota, and Oregon. The CMS received identifiable information about the Medicaid recipients from those states.
HHS representative Andrew Nixon released a statement confirming the transfer of data. He did not mention the purpose of the data transfer, but said it was legal and seeks to ensure that Medicaid benefits are given to those lawfully eligible. The CMS recently announced that it will review the Medicaid enrollees of some states to ensure that individuals with an unsatisfactory immigration status do not get coverage that is paid for by federal funds.
The disclosure prompted an alliance of 20 state Attorneys General, headed by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, to take legal action on the alleged disclosures, which were found to violate multiple laws. The alliance comprises the following states: Arizona, Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Minnesota, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Vermont.
States provide the collected data to the federal government to facilitate the Medicaid program, for example, for verifying eligibility for government funding. There was no prior instance that allowed the use of Medicaid data for immigration enforcement. The lawsuit claims the federal government allowed the use of Medicaid recipients’ data for purposes not associated with the management of the Medicaid program.
For seven decades since the creation of the Medicaid program, the personal healthcare information of program beneficiaries remained confidential. It was shared only in limited instances that help public health and protect the integrity of the Medicaid program.
The Medicaid data disclosures by the Trump administration are alleged to have violated several government data privacy laws, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Privacy Act, the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA), the Social Security Act, and the Spending Clause.
The alliance has requested the court:
- to look at the Trump administration’s actions as arbitrary, impulsive, and lacking proper procedure
- to keep the HHS from sharing personally identifiable Medicaid information with the DHS and other government agencies
- to stop the DHS from using Medicaid information for immigration enforcement
The Trump Administration has violated privacy protections when it allowed the illegal sharing of sensitive, personal health information with ICE. This created a culture of fear that could result in fewer people availing important emergency medical care. This anti-immigrant campaign needs to stop with the prevention of further sharing of Medicaid information.
Image credit: Oleksandr, AdobeStock
