On the first day of the government shutdown, Vice President JD Vance tried to claim that it’s all the fault of Democrats for wanting to give free health care to undocumented immigrants.
“This is a Democrat talking point. They say we’re not actually trying to give health care benefits to illegal aliens. And here’s why it’s not true,” Vance said on Fox News on Wednesday. “There are two Biden-era programs that explicitly gave the taxpayer health care money to illegal aliens that we turned off when President Trump took over in January.… The Democrats want to turn it back on. And in their initial proposal, the first thing that they put out to reopen the government, they actually turned that money for health care benefits for illegal aliens back on. So it’s not something that we made up. It’s not a talking point. It is in the text of the bill that they initially gave to us to reopen the government.”
.@VP nukes the Democrat lie that they aren’t trying to give free health care to illegals:”It’s not something that we made up. It’s not a talking point. It is in the text of the bill that they initially gave to us to reopen the government.” pic.twitter.com/regw9fGH1i
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) October 1, 2025
In reality, Democrats are fighting to reverse Trump’s Medicaid cuts and extend Affordable Care Act tax subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of this year and would cause health care premiums to rise for millions of Americans.
And the text of Democrats’ proposal doesn’t say at all what Vance claims it does, as American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick pointed out.
“That is an outright lie. You can read the text for yourself; the Medicaid section starts on page 55,” he wrote on X. “There is nothing in there AT ALL about ‘free healthcare’ for undocumented immigrants. Vance is just making that up COMPLETELY.”
Some on the right responded to Reichlin-Melnick by bringing up the fact that undocumented people would get treatment in an emergency room, cruelly conflating Medicare and Medicaid with the emergency medical services every Medicare-participating hospital is required to give under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986.
“If you get hit by a car, they don’t check your papers before saving your life. That’s not going to change,” Melnick continued. “Again, absolutely nothing in either the GOP Medicaid cuts passed earlier this year or the Democrats’ demand to reverse those cuts has anything at all to do with EMTALA, the law which requires hospitals to treat people who arrive with emergency medical needs.”
And yet the vice president’s rhetoric went unchallenged live, as the GOP continues to spread misinformation to justify its slash-and-burn funding bill while pointing the blame for the shutdown at Democrats.
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