Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Social Security 'Resurrects' Immigrants From Death List; Benefits Still Blocked
The New York Times: Social Security Backs Off Listing Living Migrants As Dead
The Trump administration has backed away from a maneuver in which it sought to classify thousands of living immigrants as dead in a critical Social Security database, part of a strategy to pressure them to self-deport. In April, the Social Security Administration placed roughly 6,300 migrants whose legal status had been revoked on its “death master file,” a vital data set that gets distributed to banks, lenders and other financial institutions. (Berzon, Siegel Bernard and Nehamas, 7/1)
AP: 20 States Sue After The Trump Administration Releases Private Medicaid Data To Deportation Officials
The Trump administration violated federal privacy laws when it turned over Medicaid data on millions of enrollees to deportation officials last month, California Attorney General Rob Bonta alleged on Tuesday, saying he and 19 other states’ attorneys general have sued over the move. Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s advisers ordered the release of a dataset that includes the private health information of people living in California, Illinois, Washington state, and Washington, D.C., to the Department of Homeland Security, The Associated Press first reported last month. (Seitz and Kindy, 7/1)
AP: Trump Tours Florida Immigration Lockup And Jokes About Escapees Having To Run From Alligators
President Donald Trump on Tuesday toured a new immigration detention center surrounded by alligator-filled swamps in the Florida Everglades, suggesting it could be a model for future lockups nationwide as his administration races to expand the infrastructure necessary for increasing deportations. Trump said he’d like to see similar facilities in “really, many states” and raised the prospect of also deporting U.S. citizens. He even endorsed having Florida National Guard forces possibly serve as immigration judges to ensure migrants are ejected from the country even faster. ... Before arriving, Trump joked of migrants being held there, “We’re going to teach them how to run away from an alligator if they escape prison.” (Licon and Weissert, 7/1)
The New Yorker: What Therapists Treating Immigrants Hear
Erica Lubliner is a psychiatrist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who directs a clinic that offers mental-health services to Latinos. She provides care to a wide range of patients: first- to fourth-generation immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, and undergraduate and graduate students at U.C.L.A., many of whom are the first in their families to go to college. She usually meets patients in her bright office on campus in Westwood, where paintings by Mexican artists hang on the walls and children’s books are within easy reach. But, after the ICE raids began around the city last month, she moved her appointments online. Lubliner’s patients are safe in her clinic, she told me, “but even getting here can be scary.” (Cadava, 7/1)
