Cancer ruling heats up immigration debate

Carolyn Hileman* | September 28, 2007

Chemotherapy for illegal immigrants no longer covered under Medicaid
By Alex Johnson

A long-simmering argument over what constitutes emergency medical care is shifting the financial burden for treating illegal immigrants with cancer to individual hospitals and charities, medical providers said Monday, adding fuel to the wider debate over immigration that has become a big issue in the presidential campaign.

Under federal law, Medicaid, the health care program for the poor, splits the cost of emergency medical treatment for undocumented aliens with the state. That provision has been the focus of dispute among state and federal officials since November 2001, however, when the federal government issued guidelines clarifying that dialysis and chemotherapy were to be considered treatments for chronic conditions, not emergencies.

Since then, the impact of the new definition has slowly become apparent as the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, conducts state-by-state audits of Medicaid emergency payments and declares that Medicaid will no longer approve reimbursement for illegal immigrants’ chemotherapy treatments.

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