Gov’t puts immigrants’ babies at risk

Imagine that your three-week-old baby is running a high fever or has a bad cough or isn’t gaining weight. But you are too frightened to take her to a doctor to be examined and treated.

This is the reality for many families living in this country. If the parents are immigrants, the fears are well-founded.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued an arbitrary and malicious ruling in July, aimed directly at immigrant families. The CMS ordered all states to end automatic Medicaid coverage for newborn babies of documented immigrant parents who had been in United States for under five years, as well as for babies of undocumented parents.

The CMS is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This agency, which should be promoting health care for all, declared that these immigrant parents must apply for Medicaid for each newborn. They must provide documents proving the infant’s citizenship and identity, even though the baby is automatically deemed a U.S. citizen if he or she was born here, and even when the birth expenses were covered by “emergency” Medicaid.

The parents must also provide income and other eligibility information. Until all documents are submitted and the application approved, the infant will go without Medicaid. In some states, obtaining a birth certificate or other proof of the baby’s citizenship, or waiting for approval for Medicaid eligibility, may take weeks or months. For many, care will be delayed and/or denied.

The CMS cited the Deficit Reduction Act that President George W. Bush signed in February 2006. This law requires that everyone provide proof of citizenship and identity when applying for or renewing Medicaid coverage. Although this was clearly an anti-immigrant regulation, it could also be used to deny Medicaid to other oppressed people who may not have passports or birth certificates. The elderly and people born in rural areas are especially at risk.

Before the July ruling, Medicaid automatically covered infants born in the United States to low-income families until the child’s first birthday, especially when Medicaid covered the birth expenses.

Sarah deLone, reporting for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, writes that there is nothing in the DRA that ends automatic Medicaid for babies in their first year of life.

By basing the denial of Medicaid coverage for infants on their mothers’ immigration status, the CMS has set up a discriminatory policy that denies health care to infants. This policy clearly reflects the anti-immigrant bias and racism of many in the U.S. government. It is an act of sheer harassment and terror aimed against immigrant workers and their families.

Forcing parents to file applications for Medicaid for their infants at government offices where they could be turned in to immigration authorities is outright intimidation. Understandably, some parents might be too afraid of harassment or deportation to go through the application or documentation process.

Now the federal government is stepping up pressure on the states to implement these vicious regulations.

Rosita Romero, executive director of the Dominican Women’s Development Center, told Workers World: “This is an outrageous and cruel policy. It says that we do not care about the most vulnerable. How can a government deny a baby medical coverage? This denies one of the most basic rights of human beings because of the lack of legal documents. This is just not acceptable.”

Regular medical care is crucial in the first year of life. Setting up obstacles to obtaining Medicaid coverage could harm many infants, especially those who need health care the most. Given its high cost today, many parents who desperately care about their children’s health simply cannot afford to seek medical treatment for them.

Health care providers and advocacy groups are concerned that many babies will go without necessary medical care such as immunizations, well-baby care and preventive care, and that problems such as low birth weight and birth defects may be left without medical attention. Or acute or chronic problems could worsen without immediate care. Many are asking states to maintain infants’ automatic Medicaid coverage.

Nurse-midwife Ellen Catalinotto explained: “The first months of life are critical. Infant mortality is at its highest in the first 28 days of life. Babies must be examined at two weeks of age, with several follow-up visits within the first year of life, and well-baby care shows if an infant is thriving and putting on weight.” She stressed that these new regulations could hamper a baby receiving medical treatment if a problem arises during this most vulnerable time.

Medicaid covers 25 million U.S. children, including 60 percent of low-income children and infants under age 1. This is a crucial program for poor families in the United States who need it in order to obtain health care for their infants; automatic enrollment makes it much more accessible.

To deny this care to the tens of thousands of newborns born to undocumented parents in the United States every year is unconscionable. In this, the richest country in the world, health care should be guaranteed and provided for all children. It should be a right conferred by their very birth.