Bill to track citizenship of patients in Texas hospitals fails in House

article

AUSTIN, Texas - A bill that would codify Gov. Greg Abbott's executive order requiring Texas hospitals to collect citizenship information on its patients failed in the House after a successful parliamentary challenge Tuesday night.

The bill would require Texas hospitals to keep records on how many undocumented immigrants are being treated by those hospitals. Last year, Abbott signed an executive order that required hospitals to ask for this information and report it to the state.

What we know:

Rep. Mike Olcott's bill would have required hospitals to deliver a report to the Texas Legislature on the estimated cost to hospitals caring for those who are not legally in the United States.

However, Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer challenged the bill Tuesday under Rule 8, section 1 of the House rules that state a bill's caption must provide "the legislature and the public reasonable notice of the subject of the proposed measure."

House Bill 2587's caption reads "Relating to an annual report on the financial impact on hospitals for providing certain uncompensated care," which the House decided did not effectively lay out what the bill does since it is only concerned with the costs associated with a particular group of people.

What we don't know:

While the successful parliamentary challenge essentially kills the bill for this session, it is possible that the bill will show up as an amendment to another piece of legislation and is passed that way.

The bill does not have a companion bill in the Senate to be considered.

Gov. Abbott's executive order

Despite not being written into law, Abbott's executive order, which was signed in August of last year, is still in effect and hospitals are still required to collect and report on the data collected.

Hospitals were required to begin collectin that data in November 2024 and submit their first report on the costs in March 2025.

How much did hospitals spend treating people in U.S. illegally?

By the numbers:

A report from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission shows that Texas hospitals spent more than $100 million in health care costs treating people who were in the country illegally in November 2024.

According to the report, people in the country illegally visited Texas hospitals 31,012 times in November 2024.

The overall cost to Texas hospitals was $121,779,579.

Uninsured in Texas

The Texas Hospital Association estimates around one in six Texans does not have health insurance. That works out to around 17% of Texans who do not have medical coverage. Well above the U.S. average of 8%.

In 2023, THA said $3.1 billion in medical care was not reimbursed.