California is being accused of utilizing a Medicaid "loophole" to draw down federal funds to help pay for ballooning cost of illegal immigrant healthcare. (Getty/iStock)
"If [federal dollars] are funding non-emergency healthcare for ineligible immigrants, the sole cause is provider taxes," Michael Cannon, a health policy expert at the CATO Institute told Fox News Digital. Cannon, however, suggested Republicans shot themselves in the foot by choosing only to limit the scope of eligibility around provider tax funds in the OBBBA – saying no more could go to states providing illegal immigrants healthcare – and should have just squashed them altogether.
"What they did was that Republicans preserved the ability of states to use provider taxes to fund healthcare for undocumented immigrants using Medicaid," he argued.
However, Newsom's office insisted to the Los Angeles Times that the claim California is utilizing a provider tax "loophole" to fund illegal immigrant healthcare is simply not true. It is effectively impossible to make a determination one way or the other, because states do not keep records on how provider tax funds from the federal government are spent.
"This is false — CA does not do this," Gardon said in a one-line email to the L.A. Times. Newsom's office did not reply to Fox News Digital's request for comment in time for publication.
FED AUDIT, EMERGENCY MEDICAID UNDERCUT DEMS ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT HEALTH COVERAGE
Supporters of single-payer health care march in Sacramento, Calif. (Rich Pedroncelli, File/AP Photo)
Federal law does not permit federal funds to be used for non-emergency medical care for illegal immigrants, but it does not prohibit them from being used for emergency care for these folks.
"The enormous and open-ended discretion Medicaid gives states to claim federal funding makes it hard for the feds to ensure that the program’s expenditures are reserved for its intended purposes," Pope wrote in an Op-Ed for the New York Post Friday. "Until that changes, the Democratic claim that federal money isn’t being used on illegal immigrants is simply not true."
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/california-using-backdoor-get-federal-funds-illegal-immigrant-health-care-gop-says-dems-say-nonsense