Texas Doctors Will Start Asking About Your Citizenship Status

When Texans go to the hospital for emergency care, starting on Nov. 1, they can expect to answer questions about their citizenship status.

On Aug. 8, Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order to collect immigration statuses for anyone who uses public hospitals in Texas. The governor claimed undocumented people are forcing the state to “shoulder the burden of financially supporting medical care” for them. His hope is to collect the data and begin annual reports in 2026 so the federal government can “pay back Texas” for the costs.

But data shows undocumented immigrants typically use hospitals less often than American citizens who are uninsured, according to the Texas Tribune. The Texas Hospital Association has said Texas hospitals spend about $3.1 billion a year on uninsured care that is not reimbursed.

“This executive order is intended to scare people into not using any kind of public benefits program,” Lynn Cowles, the health and food justice programs manager at Every Texan, told the Tribune. “It's pretty classic anti-immigrant rhetoric that will not lead to any new understandings from data.”

Texas has the country’s largest share of uninsured people. About 5 million — 18% of the 30 million people living in the state — don’t have insurance. But most are here legally, said Charles Miller, a former policy and budget adviser under Abbott who is now with Texas 2036. Miller told the Tribune his group estimates that only about 14% or 680,000 of Texas’ uninsured population are undocumented.

“We do have a fairly sizable population of undocumented uninsured (people), but it is not the majority. So if we’re talking about who is the majority of the uninsured, that is going to be folks who are here legally,” Miller told the site.

Read more at the Tribune.