Flashback: Obama Promised Obamacare ‘Would Not Apply’ to Illegal Aliens

Former President Barack Obama previously promised that the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, “would not apply” to illegal aliens in the United States.

On Thursday, President Joe Biden announced that his administration would open Obamacare and Medicaid rolls — both subsidized by American taxpayers — to illegal aliens enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Obama created the DACA program in 2012 through an executive order, ensuring that about 800,000 illegal aliens are allowed to remain in the U.S. without being eligible for deportation.

“When President Obama and I created the DACA program, we knew it would transform lives and it has, bringing stability and possibility to hundreds of thousands of young people known as DREAMers,” Biden said in the announcement:

It’s past time for Congress to give DREAMers a pathway to citizenship. And while we work toward that goal … we need to give DREAMers the opportunity and support they deserve. [Emphasis added]

So today, my administration is announcing our plan to expand health coverage for DACA recipients by allowing them to enroll in a plan through the Affordable Care Act or through Medicaid. Healthcare should be a right, not a privilege. [Emphasis added]

POTUS / Twitter

Biden’s announcement comes more than a decade after Obama vowed to American taxpayers that they would not subsidize healthcare coverage for illegal aliens via Obamacare. The promise came in 2009 during his first State of the Union address.

“There are also those who claim that our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants,” Obama said. “This too is false. The reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those here illegally.”

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-CA), in response, famously shouted back “You lie!”

Throughout much of 2009, Obama sold Obamacare as a federally-subsidized healthcare coverage plan that would lower costs and exclude illegal aliens.

“It’s true that the undocumented are not eligible [for Obamacare], that’s how the law was written, but if you are a U.S. citizen or you have a legal presence in this country, you are eligible,” Obama told Telemundo and Univision in 2009.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), on Thursday, slammed Biden’s plan to open Obamacare and Medicaid rolls to illegal aliens, calling it “an insult to American citizenship.”

“Rewarding illegal immigration will bring more illegal immigration,” Cotton said.

Already, taxpayers are forced to subsidize at least $18.5 billion of annual medical costs for illegal aliens living in the United States, according to estimates by Chris Conover, formerly of the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research at Duke University.

When American voters were polled by CNN on the issue in July 2019, nearly 6-in-10 said they were opposed to forcing taxpayers to provide free health benefits to illegal aliens, including 63 percent of swing voters and 61 percent of self-described “moderates.”

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.