Affordable Care Act to Drop 200,000 Immigrants After Failing to Prove Residency

The Obama administration announced this week that about 200,000 enrollees of the Affordable Care Act will lose their coverage because they failed to prove legal U.S. residency.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services [CMS] announced this week that the 200,000 will be dropped by the end of February.

"These are individuals who have gone through the process of attempting to confirm their citizenship or immigration status for their 2014 coverage and (despite) repeated outreach we've not received that documentation," Andy Slavitt, CMS' principal deputy administrator, said in a statement, as reported by USA Today. "So our requirements of enforcing the law will require us to remove these people from our coverage."

The Wall Street Journal reports that many of those cut from the health insurance plan were enrolled in the Affordable Care Act's website for 2014.

"Most of the people who are being cut off have had coverage through the site for a year or more," the Wall Street Journal reported.

News of the loss of healthcare for 200,000 comes after President Obama spoke out against the Staples Corporation, suggesting the business limits part-time employee hours to avoid paying healthcare.

"I haven't looked at Staples stock lately or what the compensation of the CEO is, but I suspect that they could well afford to treat their workers favorably and give them some basic financial security, and if they can't, then they should be willing to allow those workers to get the Affordable Care Act without cutting wages," the president told Buzzfeed in a recent interview.

A spokesperson for Staples shot back, saying that the president "appears not to have all the facts," arguing that the company has been keeping a cap on part-time employees' work hours for the past decade.