Vice President JD Vance needs to prioritize one policy change above all others as he leads the Trump administration’s crackdown on fraud in California and elsehwere: closing a loophole that is allowing thousands of illegal aliens to receive Medicaid.
Federal lawrequiresstates to verify the citizenship or immigration status of people who apply for Medicaid (which is Medi-Cal in California), but gives them a “reasonable opportunity period” to provide documentation.
The minimum grace period is 90 days, under federal regulations. a long grace period. But bureaucrats have stretched it into permanent enrollment, funneling our tax dollars to illegal aliens who shouldn’t even be in the country.
States add to the problem by grantingnew“reasonable opportunity periods” to the same people over and over again, keeping illegal aliens on Medicaid indefinitely.
For example, one Utah Medicaid applicant has been enrolled for 5,820 days without proving their immigration status. That is 16 years of welfare without proof of eligibility.
Think back to where you were 16 years ago. The iPad didn’t exist, Blockbuster Video still had thousands of stores, and three in four Americans still had a landline.
That enrollee has been drawing Medicaid benefits every single day since, while state officials wait for proof of citizenship that has never come.
But Utah is not even an outlier. Seven in 10 “temporary” Medicaid cases now exceed 90 days, and the federal government allows it.
What’s more, Governor Gavin Newsom’s California may be the worst offender of all, but his administration doesn’t want you to know it.
When my organization filed a public records request to find out how many people are exploiting these extensions, the California Department of Health Care Services strung us along for four months, with delay after delay, before it demanded $182,000 to produce the data.
Source: California Post – Breaking California News, Photos & Videos
