Governor Ron DeSantis’ new law, which requires Florida hospitals to ask patients about their immigration status, will go into effect on Saturday, July 1.
Senate Bill 1718 was signed into law by the Republican governor in May.
Under the new legislation, hospitals that accept Medicaid will have to ask patients about their immigration status before admitting them to their care.
They will also need to submit all relevant documents to the Agency for Health Care Administration, which will use them to calculate the annual cost to the state of uncompensated care for people living in Florida illegally.
Groups like Hispanic Unity Florida that advocate for immigrants want that message to reach all immigrants regardless of their legal status, especially as of July 1, the date on which Florida’s new law against illegal immigration goes into effect. .
One of the measures requires hospitals that receive Medicaid funds to collect information on the immigration status of their patients, a proposal that has sown fear in immigrant communities.
Felipe Pizon-President Hispanic Unity of Florida, says: “That is the great fear that people believe that their personal information is going to be reported to the state of Florida and somehow they are going to identify that person and they are going to be able to identify where they are living”.
Carlos Migoya, the president of the Jackson Hospital Health System, the third largest public hospital in the country, tells us that they have never shared or will share personal patient information, he says:
“This information that is being passed to the state is only the number of patients and the patient’s spending on their medical care, not individual information, in any way possible and nothing to do with immigration.”
Migoya explains that for years they have been asking patients these questions to determine the best way to finance their medical care and for their records.
Migoya says, “At this point we have never had a problem with any patient asking these questions. Our employees are fully prepared to continue the same information that they are doing up to now.”
In addition, he emphasizes that answering questions about their immigration status is voluntary for patients and that this does not change in any hospital as of this new state law.
The law only imposes this requirement on hospitals that accept Medicaid, it does not apply to clinics, or individual physicians. .
