Sponsors (5)
The bill aims to provide policymakers with aggregated data on uncompensated care while protecting direct patient identifiers, but it risks deterring vulnerable patients from seeking care, exposing immigrant communities to surveillance pressure, and imposing costs and funding risks on hospitals.
Hospitals, health systems, and policymakers will receive annual aggregated counts of uncompensated care for people not lawfully present, giving state and federal officials better data to target resources and funding decisions for uncompensated care.
Hospitals keep protection against being forced to transmit patient names or other personally identifying information to HHS or DHS under the implementing rules, reducing some direct risks to patient-identifying privacy.
Immigrants, low-income people, and uninsured individuals may avoid seeking hospital care because of questions about immigration status or fear of enforcement, increasing unmet health needs and worsening public health outcomes.
Hospitals and health systems face substantial new administrative burdens and costs to collect, verify, and report immigration-status data quarterly and face risk of exclusion from federal health programs if they fail to comply, threatening hospital finances and patient access to federally funded care.
Collecting and reporting detailed immigration-status counts, even without sharing names, could erode privacy, enable increased surveillance or enforcement pressure on immigrant communities, and chill trust in hospitals.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Conditions hospitals' participation in federal health programs on collecting patient immigration-status information, verifying some claims, and quarterly reporting aggregated counts to HHS and DHS.
Official title: To amend title XI of the Social Security Act to require hospitals participating in Federal health care programs to report certain information related to immigration status.
Introduced July 13, 2026 by Charles Roy · Last progress July 13, 2026
Requires hospitals that participate in federal health care programs to ask patients about immigration status on intake forms, verify certain documented lawful-permanent-resident claims, and submit quarterly aggregated counts of patients by detailed immigration-status categories and refusals. The law directs HHS (with DHS coordination) to compile annual reports to Congress starting in 2026 assessing uncompensated-care costs, service impacts, and hospital funding needs for people not lawfully present, while forbidding hospitals from disclosing patient names or other personally identifying information to HHS or DHS. Hospitals must include a statement assuring patients that responses will not affect care or be sent to law enforcement except when the patient is suspected or charged with specified criminal or immigration offenses; HHS may issue implementing rules. The reporting requirement is a condition of continued participation in federal health programs and begins on enactment, with HHS publication of an aggregated analysis to Congress each year beginning in 2026.