No, they cannot, and that’s been the case for decades. Under a 1996 law, undocumented immigrants are not eligible to enroll in health insurance programs that are run by or paid for by the federal government. Even before 1996, undocumented immigrants had very limited access to health care, but the restrictions were created program by program.
This means that undocumented immigrants cannot access
- Medicaid and the Children’ s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which provide health care for lower-income people
- Medicare, which provides health care for older Americans and people with certain disabilities and illnesses
- private insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare
When we say undocumented immigrants, we mean people living in the United States without current legal immigration status or permission to be in the country. This term can refer to people with many types of immigration statuses and situations, including, for example, immigrants who originally entered the country with a visa which then expired or people who had permission to be in the United States under a specific program or policy which was then ended. In 2025 alone, the Trump administration has revoked the legal statuses of nearly 1 million immigrants, making them newly undocumented and unable to legally work.
The most reliable estimates are that 13 million people in the United States are undocumented and nearly half are longstanding community members, who have lived in the country for 20 or more years.