I’m aware of that. But, by and large, it’s the illegal population that hurt the most.
With legal free loaders, you can sue and get a judgment, garnish wages, take property, etc. With illegals, you can’t.
That's probably true today...but I wonder about the details. I think poor, rural whites constituted a majority of ER freeloaders for most of the 60 years since the law was passed...and, judging by the size of our bad debt writeoffs, most of them never paid.