White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt sparked outrage on Thursday after dodging a question about whether emergency rooms should check a patient’s immigration status before providing life-saving treatment to them.
Leavitt was asked directly by a reporter: “Should ERs check for immigration status before treating a dying patient?”
She replied, “That’s probably not a question for me to answer. I think that’s a question for health care professionals and legal experts to answer.”
Medical professionals swiftly condemned Leavitt’s evasive response.
CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a cardiologist and professor at George Washington University, called the idea of denying emergency care based on immigration status “grossly immoral.”
“Requiring ERs to check immigration status before providing emergency care to a dying patient would be grossly immoral, and no doctor I know would comply,” Reiner wrote on social media. “I certainly wouldn’t.”
Dr. Craig Spencer, an ER physician who famously survived Ebola, said he never asks about immigration status or insurance when treating patients in a critical condition:
“My job is to respond to the person in front of me, as if neither immigration nor insurance matters. Because in that moment, neither of those things matter. So tell me, what do Americans want me to do when the person dying before me is undocumented? Let them die? And what if they’re uninsured? Check that they’ve paid their monthly dues before I check their pulse?”
Spencer added, “We should stop making this an argument about providing emergency care to certain populations. And start asking how it reflects on us all if we’re truly willing to withhold care in those moments of emergency — just because of what a piece of paper might or might not say.”
Leavitt’s remarks came as Republicans continued attempting to shift blame for the ongoing government shutdown onto Democrats, falsely claiming it stems from Democratic efforts to provide healthcare access to undocumented immigrants.