Justice in Ageing condemns the Trump administration’s disclosure of Medicaid enrollees’ private info to immigration enforcement officers. In accordance with information experiences, final week the U.S. Division of Well being & Human Providers disregarded federal Medicaid officers and offered private knowledge about hundreds of thousands of non-citizen Medicaid enrollees to the Division of Homeland Safety. This motion violates the elemental proper to privateness and endangers the lives of older immigrants and all immigrants who depend on Medicaid.
Utilizing this info to terrorize immigrants and their households—which embody older adults and U.S. citizen youngsters—will deliver each fast and lasting harms to our communities. Older immigrants can be afraid to entry well being care and different helps that helps them meet their primary wants as a result of actions like these destroy the hard-earned belief that communities maintain in our authorities.
Moreover, they violate the longstanding safety in opposition to the sharing of delicate well being knowledge with immigration officers and are a part of an anti-immigrant agenda that assaults older immigrants’ rights and entry to well being care, housing, and financial safety. In the end, these actions will harm the well being and well-being of all of us.
Everybody deserves to belief that the non-public info they supply to entry well being care and different providers can be stored confidential. We name on the Trump administration to instantly halt any additional sharing or use of Medicaid or different inappropriately obtained knowledge by immigration officers.
