Amidst America’s grocery affordability crisis, California is reportedly spending billions of taxpayer dollars to send free luxury meals to eligible welfare recipients including illegal immigrants living in the state.
Enrollees in California’s Medi-Cal welfare program — including millions of illegals — receive free meals and groceries such as salmon, beef, organic produce and pre-prepared luxury health food brands each week, thanks to Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s $12 billion Medicaid reform package, “CalAIM,” a Wednesday report from City Journal found.
The Newsom’s office did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
To be eligible for the food service as part of CalAIM, recipients must be enrolled in Medi-Cal and report some kind of underlying health condition such as a chronic disease or a mental or behavioral health condition, the outlet reported.
Medi-Cal then pays California-based food contractors using Medicaid funds to deliver the food to recipients doorsteps for up to 12 weeks, after which eligible recipients can reenroll, according to City Journal. One of these contractors, Project FoodBox, is the nation’s biggest biller of Medicaid code S9977, an unspecified “meals” code that includes medically tailored food. Project FoodBox raked in $67.8 million dollars from Medicaid between 2022 and 2024.
Another California-based biller Hunger: Not Impossible, now called Bento Health, received more than $7.7 million Medicaid funds to “connect Medicaid health plan members with curated groceries” to include sending luxury food items to illegals, the outlet found.
On Bento Health’s website, the company says that eligibility for its services “is not tied to immigration status, employment status, nationality, or any other factor other than your insurance provider’s eligibility criteria.”
These programs cost taxpayers more than $1,500 for a single “medically tailored meals” recipient, the City Journal reported.
Nearly 14 million people living in California are enrolled in Medi-Cal as of an Aug. 12 report from the UC Berkley Labor Center.
In 2024, the state extended “full-scope” Medi-Cal coverage to illegal aliens, with some 1.6 million undocumented persons relying on the welfare program to receive free healthcare, according to the California Health Care foundation.
The state has since frozen illegals’ ability to sign up for these programs but still allows previous enrollees to keep their coverage, allowing qualified illegal aliens in California to get these state-funded luxury food boxes — for free, the report from the City Journal said.
The report comes about a week after the federal government deferred 1.2 billion dollars in Medicaid funding to California.
California is the most expensive state for groceries in the continental U.S., with grocery prices nearly 11 percent above average, according to a Sept. 15 cost of living report from Visual Capitalist.
Across the nation, nearly 1 in 5 working adults must use money from their savings in order to pay for weekly groceries because costs are so expensive, a recent study from the Urban Institute looking at how American families are paying for groceries found.
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[ H/T WorldNetDaily ]
