A Texas state employee testified before lawmakers that tens of thousands of patients who were not lawfully in the United States received care in Texas hospitals in recent months, costing millions of dollars. Gov. Greg Abbott had ordered hospitals to ask patients about their immigration status, but the data collected has not been publicly released yet.
During a House Public Health Committee hearing, it was revealed that the number of visits by undocumented patients was in the tens of thousands, with costs totaling in the millions. The delay in releasing the data was attributed to manual data entry from paper forms received from hospitals. The Governor’s order required hospitals to collect information starting in November 2024, but it is unclear if the data collected was only for that month.
State Rep. Mike Olcott introduced a bill to formalize Abbott’s order into an annual report, similar to legislation in Florida. The goal is to understand how much uncompensated care in Texas hospitals is due to undocumented immigrants. However, advocates argue that a large portion of the $3.1 billion spent by Texas hospitals on uninsured care is for American citizens without health insurance.
Every Texan, an organization advocating for better healthcare, highlighted the issue of uninsured citizens contributing to the high costs of uncompensated care. The bill is seen as a way to keep Texans informed about healthcare spending and address the problems faced by rural hospitals in the state.
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