California Broke Law to Give Medicaid to Illegals

May 30, 2024 9:57 pm

The State of California breached federal law and gave tens of millions of Medicaid dollars to illegal immigrants.

This is according to an audit that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General published this month.

The audit covered October 2018 through June 2019.

“California improperly claimed $52.7 Million in federal Medicaid reimbursement made on behalf of noncitizens with unsatisfactory immigration status,” auditors wrote.

California’s Medicaid program uses state funds to pay for medical services to illegals, through Medi-Cal, which is that state’s version of Medicaid.

States may not ask the federal government to reimburse them when they provide medical services to illegals. States may only do so when they pay for an illegal’s emergency medical care.

The feds want California to return that money. Federal officials also want California “to determine the amount of any improperly claimed federal reimbursement for payments made on behalf of illegals.”

“In its comments to our draft report, the state agency proposed to return the funds through a manual process to expedite the refund,” auditors said in a statement to RVIVR.

“[California] stated that it will work closely with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services [CMS] to address any additional considerations that may arise during the refund process.”

California’s Department of Health Care Services (HCS) administer Medi-Cal. HCS staff members promised Tuesday to respond to requests for comment but by noon Thursday they had not done so.

Federal Medicaid benefits are generally limited to individuals who are citizens or nationals of the United States or qualified noncitizens.

Examples of qualified noncitizens includes the following:

• Those who are refugees

• Those granted asylum

• Those who were lawfully admitted for permanent residence under the Immigration and Nationality Act

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Generally, many qualified noncitizens must wait five years from the date they receive their qualifying status to receive federally funded full-scope Medicaid services. These include inpatient hospital services, outpatient hospital services, physician services, and laboratory and x-ray services.

As RVIVR reported last year, recipients of federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid received additional money. Specifically, they received more than $2 trillion, in error over a two-decade timespan.

Also as reported one year ago, Medicare lost $128 million over the past five years due to duplicate payments to people.

Special thanks to Warhammer’s Wife proofreading this story before publication to make certain there were no misspellings, grammatical errors or other embarrassing mistakes and/or typos. Follow Warhammer on Twitter @Real_Warhammer. Also follow Warhammer on TruthSocial at @Real_Warhammer