Eighteen Senate Democrats are cosponsoring Sen. Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” bill, which would extend taxpayer-funded health care to illegal aliens — less than a year after several of those same lawmakers publicly denied that Democrats supported any such thing.
The bill defines eligibility as covering “every individual who is a resident of the United States,” with the Health and Human Services secretary tasked with writing the rule on how residency is determined. The legislation also bars “discrimination” based on “citizenship status,” a provision the group Unleash Prosperity flagged as removing any doubt about who would qualify.
The push comes three weeks before voters decide control of Congress, with Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and other Democrats making Medicare for All, including coverage for illegal aliens, a centerpiece of their campaigns.
What they said last year
During the 2025 government shutdown, Republicans accused Democrats of wanting to hand taxpayer dollars to illegal aliens for health care. Democrats denied it in forceful terms.
“It is a flat-out lie! It is a flat-out lie! There is nothing in Medicaid, nothing in Medicare, that permits one undocumented immigrant to get one dollar of assistance. None.” — Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., called the accusation “a red herring” and “a fear tactic,” telling an interviewer that “federal law today prohibits health insurance benefits, the Affordable Care Act, tax credits, Medicare, Medicaid” from being used by anyone in the country illegally, and that Democrats weren’t trying to change that.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., dismissed the claim as “a big lie.” Around the same time, a fact-check by Saranac Hale Spencer declared that President Trump had “falsely” claimed Democrats wanted $1.5 trillion for “illegal aliens.”
The record now
Warren, Smith and Van Hollen are among the senators who denied the policy last fall. Their support — or the support of their colleagues — for Sanders’ bill now puts that denial in direct conflict with what they’re backing in writing. Sanders’ legislation is the policy itself, not a Republican talking point.
Voters deciding control of Congress in three weeks are being asked to take Democrats’ past denials at face value. The bill carries a price tag in the trillions, a detail that sits uneasily with Democrats’ repeated claims that affordability is their priority. A Democrat majority would hand these senators more power to advance the very policy they told the public didn’t exist.
