Despite the far-reaching potential expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation estimates that a substantial portion of low-income uninsured adults will be ineligible for Medicaid because of their immigration status which highlighted four states with high percentages of immigrants: Arizona, California, Nevada and Texas. In these states, the challenge of developing “strategies for meeting the health care needs of” immigrants will be “particularly difficult for safety-net providers” because of “large numbers of immigrants who will not be eligible for Medicaid.” For years, health officials in Southern and Southwestern states have struggled to provide adequate care for immigrants, and now it seems that the ACA will do little to ease their burden according to a recent report at CaliforniaHealthline.
