Technically, there is no such thing as an “illegal alien.” That’s a pejorative term used by people with prejudices against immigrants. It’s shorthand to refer to someone who did not present proper papers when entering the country or who presented proper papers, but overstayed their visa and thus no longer have the proper documents sanctioning their presence in this country.
You can see why people call them “illegals.” The proper term is undocumented alien or undocumented immigrant, depending on why they are here. Alien means they are not citizens, I think.
Anyway, the Ohio law is a result of prejudice about undocumented aliens. People blame them for all kinds of things. People also blame those who employ them.
One unfair charge on undocumented immigrants is that they get free health care and pay no taxes. The data do not support this charge. Undocumented immigrants pay far more in taxes and fees than they receive in benefits.
They are not entitled to Medicaid, which does pay for the care of the poor. So they may work, and they pay taxes on their earnings, but they are not entitled to Medicaid, and usually they work in jobs that don’t have other forms of health insurance. So if they get sick, they have to pay out of pocket. Often they can’t afford to.
But consider a situation where they are sick with an infectious disease. They go to the hospital and they can’t afford to pay for their care. Who can we get to pay? Perhaps those employers who were so chintzy, they refused to provide health insurance for their employees.
Why only if the employees have infectious diseases? I don’t know. Why not make those employers provide health insurance for all the health needs of their undocumented employees?
It’s an insane little law on the face of it. You’d have to ask the authors what they were really thinking about. There are certainly no reasonable policy grounds I can think of for the law, and I spent years in the field of health policy.