​On October 15, 2019, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to implement a “public charge” rule which would harm legal immigrants and their family members if they use Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or public housing benefits or are predicted to use such benefits in the future. Though most of the 260,000 comments addressing the proposed rule strongly opposed it, the final rule was adopted with few changes, reportedly under strong pressure from the White House. New evidence shows why this would be detrimental to public health. Economic impact data from the public charge rule from a policy brief from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, California Food Policy Associates and the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Education and Research was cited in the blog post.