One of former president Donald J. Trump’s final television ads before Election Day reprises an old talking point.
The segment, released Oct. 17, declares that Vice President Kamala Harris “wants struggling seniors to pay more Social Security taxes while she gives Medicare and Social Security to illegals.”
The first half of the statement is inaccurate. Ms. Harris has not suggested raising Social Security taxes for seniors; instead, she has said she supports eliminating the $168,000 income cap on the taxes workers pay to fund Social Security, a threshold above which income becomes exempt. Under that proposal, Social Security taxes would increase for working people who earn almost three times median annual pay, not for struggling seniors.
The latter half of the ad’s claim — that Ms. Harris supports giving taxpayer-funded health benefits to illegal immigrants — is a misrepresentation of Ms. Harris’s current proposals. Ms. Harris made statements in 2019 that could be understood this way, but she has stepped back from that position in recent months as her health care platform has become clearer.
Mr. Trump has also misstated the Biden administration’s policy. Here is a look at what that is and what Ms. Harris has said about the issue.
What is the current federal policy?
Immigrants who live in the United States illegally do not qualify for federally funded coverage through Medicare, Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which provides health coverage for low-income children. In most states, they are also ineligible to buy private health coverage through the Affordable Care Act marketplaces.
At an event in New Jersey in May, Mr. Trump said that the Biden administration was “giving Obamacare and all free government health care to illegal aliens.”
That was the month when the Biden administration announced a new policy for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which protects people who arrived in the United States as children more than a decade ago from deportation.
Starting in November, according to a description of the new policy on the White House website, DACA recipients can apply for health coverage through HealthCare.gov and state-based health insurance marketplaces set up under the Affordable Care Act. But they would need to purchase it.
Those with incomes low enough could qualify for federal subsidies to help with the premium costs, and some might qualify for subsidies big enough to make the coverage free.
About 100,000 young people are estimated to be eligible.
What has Ms. Harris said about health care for illegal immigrants?
Mr. Trump’s talking point about Ms. Harris and immigrant health benefits has become something of a drumbeat throughout the election season.
At a rally in North Carolina in July, he said Ms. Harris had “endorsed free taxpayer-funded government health care for all illegal aliens.” The Republican National Committee and Republican candidates in various other races made similar comments about Ms. Harris throughout the summer.
Then Mr. Trump took to social media, writing in August that Ms. Harris “will obliterate Social Security and Medicare by giving it away to the Millions of Illegal Immigrants who are infiltrating our Country!” And in September, he wrote that Ms. Harris allowed immigrants to cross the border and “hop into our Social Security and Medicare programs.”
As a senator in 2019, Ms. Harris was one of the sponsors of a bill that would have given free and generous health coverage to anyone residing the United States, regardless of their citizenship status. The bill, called Medicare for All, would have remade the American health care system into a taxpayer-financed single-payer system that did away with premiums and co-payments.
During a Democratic primary debate that year, a moderator asked the 10 candidates onstage to raise their hands if their health plans would cover immigrants who were in the country illegally. Ms. Harris — alongside the nine other participants — raised her hand.
Since announcing her candidacy for presidency this year, she has stepped away from Medicare for all. Instead, Ms. Harris has said she wants to strengthen the Affordable Care Act by renewing income-based subsidies that are due to expire next year. Her aides refused to share her current position on coverage for undocumented immigrants, but free insurance for this group does not fit with her current overall approach. It would mean she endorses a special, unspecified policy to offer free insurance to this group only — and not to American citizens. A campaign spokesman pointed instead to a news article that said that Ms. Harris “has not expressly said she supports free, taxpayer-supported health coverage for immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.”
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