Gavin Newsom has served as a top campaign surrogate for Joe Biden this election cycle.
But their relationship could be coming to a fork in the road.
And Gavin Newsom was frantic when Joe Biden handed him this shocking bill.
California billed by the federal government for free healthcare to illegal aliens
California Governor Gavin Newsom is locked in a battle with the Democrat State Legislature over how to solve a nearly $45 billion budget shortfall.
The state had a budget surplus of $97.5 billion two years ago.
But that money was frittered away by reckless spending by Newsom and his allies in the State Legislature.
Now California has to pay up to the federal government for one of its giveaways to illegal aliens.
The Office of the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found in an audit that California improperly billed the federal government for healthcare costs for illegal aliens.
$52 million in Federal Medicaid reimbursements were “improperly” claimed by California for “noncitizens with unsatisfactory immigration status.”
Federal money for Medicaid can’t be used for illegal aliens outside of emergency services except for rare instances.
The Inspector General’s report found that the formula used by California underestimated the cost of the illegal aliens’ health care.
“California improperly claimed $52.7 million in Federal Medicaid reimbursement because it continued to use the proxy percentage that was developed in the early 2000s without assessing whether the percentage correctly accounted for the costs of providing nonemergency services to noncitizens with UIS under managed care,” the audit found. “In addition, California did not have any policies and procedures for assessing and periodically reassessing the proxy percentage.”
Giving taxpayer-funded healthcare to illegal aliens could cause California more problems
The period covered in the audit only ran from October 2018 and June 2019.
During that period California’s Medicaid program, Medi-Cal, spent more than $370 million on illegal aliens with $52.7 million improperly billed to the federal government.
States are free to expand their Medicaid programs to pay for illegal aliens but they can’t do it with federal funds.
The Inspector General’s report recommended that California work with the federal government to find more improper Medicaid billing.
California used the wrong formula for calculating reimbursements for decades so the $52.7 million is likely just the tip of the iceberg in what the state owes the federal government.
The report asked the state to repay the money it improperly billed the federal government.
California’s Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) didn’t dispute the findings and claimed that it would repay the federal government.
“The Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) does not contest the findings of the report by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) and plans to repay the federal government in full by June 30, 2024,” DHCS said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Additionally, DHCS has worked with the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to develop and implement a more refined service identification methodology with updated payment and claiming processes.”
California is going broke despite some of the highest taxes in the country from giving free healthcare to illegal aliens.
