By Monica Showalter www.americanthinker.com
California's governor, Gavin Newsom, piously signed off on a law to deliver free health care for millions of illegal immigrants this past year.
He virtue-signaled. He lectured the nation about "our values." He insisted his state was better than other states for it.
And then he tried to ... stick the federal government with the bill.
That is, until he got caught.
According to CBS Austin:
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (TND) — California owes the federal government $52.7 million after it “improperly” requested reimbursements for services provided to noncitizens, according to a recent inspector general report.
The Golden State claimed Medicaid reimbursements for services it provided to “noncitizens with unsatisfactory immigration status,” the report reads. The category does not include those seeking asylum or refugees. States are prohibited from claiming such federal reimbursements except in medical emergency situations, which did not apply here, according to the report.
An audit by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services inspector general’s office found California had been using an outdated calculation method to determine how much federal reimbursements to claim between Oct. 2018 and June 2019. This calculation did not account for the services given to noncitizens, which must be funded by the state, according to the report.
“We recommend that California: (1) refund to the Federal Government the improperly claimed Federal reimbursement of $52.7 million for capitation payments made on behalf of noncitizens with UIS and (2) work with CMS to determine the amount of any improperly claimed Federal reimbursement for capitation payments made on behalf of noncitizens with UIS for an agreed-upon period not covered by our audit,” auditors wrote.
An outdated calculation method? As in, bookkeeping error? Last we heard, that was a jailtime felony in New York.
Funny how the error only went in one way, and it's California that has to cough up the cash to make it right. I have my doubts about that, since in this case, the "underlying crime" linked to this bookkeeping error is pretty plain: Import as many illegals as possible to offset the flight of Californians to other states and keep the congressional seats as a result.
Newsom's scheme, in other words is: We get the congressional representation, the rest of you get the bill.
That would explain the odd picture we see here, from a state that's $78 billion in the hole on its budget front, and which "lost" $20 billion to fraudulent COVID unemployment claims in a matter that has yet to be recovered. Now they're on the hook for illegals' health care when under the table, they had expected to get Uncle Sam to pay the illegals' health care bills all along.
The auditor's report notes that this has been going on for years, so the $52.7 million is just a starter repayment. There will be many more to cover the years previous to the one the auditors caught, and the report didn't say how many of these years there would be, but it's likely substantial, and with that the case, there will probably be more tax hikes as a result of it. They certainly aren't going to take a pay cut to assme responsibility or their malfeasance.
The bottom line here is that paying for every tom dick and harry's health care bills from every corner on Earth is, as the lefties like to say, an unsustainable economic model. Every freebie to illegals has a tradeoff cost and there are always tradeoffs in financing economic priorities. Paying for illegals' health care means either tax hikes for Californians, who are already the highest-taxed in the U.S., or else cuts to police, firefighters and other vital services. There is no free lunch, not even a federal free lunch, once the auditors get hold of the bookkeeping.
Gavin Newsom's state not only dished out free health care for illegals in contravention to federal law, it tried to make the feds pay for it for them. That's Medicare fraud, and any private doctor who tried to do thawt would get his keister handed to him.
Not so Newsom's California bureaucrats who just sheepishly nod and say 'whoops, get that to you soon.'
The federal Department of Health and Human Services, whose auditors caught the illegal payments, is run by a smarmy ex-politician named Xavier Becerra, who is a close Newsom ally from way back. How much of this overbilling was covered up in the years that Newsom was helping himself to the federal till because they were such good cronies?
It suggests that an incoming Trump administration may have an Augean stable of such corruption to clean up once it takes office. It also raises questions as to what else Newsom might be stealing for other expenses delivered to illegals. You can see the dollar bill signs in his pupils of his eyes.
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