This is just one of many big things happening in the state budget this year, but this one has largely slipped under the radar & I think a lot of people (including a lot of immigrants who will be hit by it) have no idea it’s happening.
Background – under Trump’s HR1, virtually all immigrants besides US citizens & permanent residents will be cut off from their Medicaid access for both healthcare and long-term care this October.
This change comes down mostly on refugees, asylees, people with Temporary Protected Status, and work visa holders. While undocumented immigrants have unfortunately never had access to Medicaid, these “lawfully present” immigrant groups have had it for decades – so this is a major departure from the status quo. It’s actually a pretty wild scenario where suddenly these specific immigrants still have the legal right to live here, still have the right to work, still pay taxes, but can no longer access Medicaid like everyone else. A lot of them are people we set up specific programs for telling them to come to our country (eg United for Ukraine).
Immigrant groups have spent this legislative session begging lawmakers to step up and take some action. ICE defense is flashier and gets more attention, but this policy is one of the life-and-death consequences of xenophobia too.
The state actually has the ability to redirect funds to cover health insurance at the state level for people who don’t have federal access. We have an existing state program, Apple Health Expansion, that covers Apple Health for a portion of undocumented immigrants who aren’t eligible for Medicaid. So there is a path to making sure no one loses care – but it requires taking our existing state Medicaid funds for these populations and redirecting it to the state program they can enroll in, plus beefing up that funding to cover more people.
The WA House & Senate just released their proposed budgets, which will have to be reconciled in the next couple weeks. The initial proposals are pretty disappointing.
- The House proposed budget funds 600 healthcare & long-term care slots for the 3,000 people who are going to lose long-term care (i.e. nursing homes & in-home caregivers for very elderly, sick people)
- The Senate budget funds 1,162 slots for the 3,000 people who are going to lose long-term care
- NEITHER budget provides funding for the rest of the 30,000 immigrants who are going to lose their health insurance
The last point here is maybe the most salient. You may be aware that Medicaid is funded half by the federal government, and half by the state government. That means when the federal government kicks 30,000 people off their healthcare just for being immigrants, inaction by our state means… savings in the state budget.
In other words: it’s not just that the state has failed to step up and add funding for these immigrants. We are actually saving money — our half of the Medicaid costs for these 30,000 people — by not funding healthcare for most of them, just because the federal government said we don’t have to. That’s theoretically hundreds of millions of dollars that WA might save by taking funding from healthcare for immigrants and reappropriating it to other places.
This is obviously pretty disappointing in a state that claims to care about immigrants & legislators who routinely use “Trump-proofing our state” as a talking point to get elected. It would be one thing if they just weren’t adding a bunch of funding where the federal government has taken it away… but the idea of actively saving money by taking away healthcare from people who literally fled wars is pretty gross.
I have a lot of Ukrainian refugee friends who will be affected by this policy, and they are desperate to get the word out about it and try to push the state to fund care for immigrants in these last couple weeks of the legislative session. These are people who rely on Apple Health to keep themselves & their elderly family members alive. One of my friends has a brother who’s on a transplant list and is worried that he’s going to get kicked off his healthcare before he can get his transplant. It’s a really scary time and it’s honestly horrifying that our state isn’t doing more.
If you want to share here’s some more background info –
op ed written by one of the refugees who will be affected: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2026/feb/22/inna-nefodova-immigrant-families-like-mine-will-lo/
letter to legislators you can sign on and send: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/immigrantcareinwa?source=sh
submitted by /u/ljubljanadelrey
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