Tag: welfare

Illinois Moves To Cut Thousands Of Non-Citizens From Taxpayer-Subsidized Health Care

Illinois officials are moving to stop providing taxpayer-subsidized health care to thousands of non-citizens, including many illegal immigrants, in a bid to rein in soaring costs.

The Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services said in a recent statement it will start annually verifying the eligibility for two programs—Health Benefits for Immigrant Adults (HBIA) and Health Benefits for Immigrant Seniors (HBIS)—after enrollment was paused due to budget concerns.

“This process will mirror the redetermination process used in the traditional Medicaid program to ensure those enrolled remain eligible,” the agency said.

The plans include closing cases for people who are enrolled who make over a certain amount or who otherwise are no longer eligible for the program in which they’re enrolled. Officials also plan on removing legal permanent residents who qualify for Medicaid, which is a federal program.

“The redetermination process ensures that those who are enrolled remain eligible for coverage,” Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services spokesperson Jamie Munks told WBEZ. “If an individual loses coverage through the redetermination process, it is because they no longer meet eligibility requirements, or they are required to respond or submit additional information to prove their continued eligibility, but they do not do so.”

The processes are estimated to reduce the number of enrollees in the state programs by about 6,000 people, state Sen. Don DeWitte, a Republican, told the Center Square after hearing from state health officials. Those removals would result in savings of $14 million.

HBIS, launched in 2020, provides taxpayer-funded health care for seniors who would receive Medicaid coverage but can’t get it due to their immigration status. HBIA, introduced in 2022, provides the same state benefits for people aged 42 to 64. Illegal immigrants are among the approximately 63,000 covered.

“Everyone, regardless of documentation status, deserves access to holistic healthcare coverage,” Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, said in one of his statements in support of the programs.

Many Republicans have opposed the programs, noting that some citizens still lack health care.

The costs of the programs have increasingly sparked concern among lawmakers of both parties.

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City of Denver Cut Employee Hours to Zero in Order to Keep Paying for Services for Illegal Border Crossers

The city of Denver has been struggling for weeks now to pay for services for illegal border crossers. Early in February it was announced that the city would start cutting some services for taxpayers, and unsuccessfully tried to blame Republicans.

Now the city is going to start cutting the hours of city employees, in some cases down to zero, in order to keep paying for services for illegals.

This is simply not sustainable and anyone with an ounce of common sense knows it.

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Massachusetts Spending $64 a Day to Feed Each Migrant, On Track to Spend $1 Billion By 2025

State records show that Massachusetts is spending about $64 per migrant per day to feed those in state care, a cost that is contributing to the expected one billion dollars in expenses to be spent by the Bay State by 2025.

The latest numbers show that the state is paying out $16 for breakfast, $17 for lunch, and a whopping $31 for every dinner every day, according to WBZ-TV.

The state insists that it is required to provide the free food due to its 1983 sanctuary city law, which was passed to deal with a far smaller number of homeless people in the state, Fox Business Network reported.

However, the right to shelter law is not exactly being applied as written. The law also says that those afforded shelter must be supplied with refrigerators and the capability to prepare food, but migrants are being given already-made food, not the capability to prepare their own.

The state is currently housing and caring for about 20,000 migrants, according to the Daily Mail.

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Inside Mayor Adams’ migrant debit card boondoggle — no-bid bank gets $50 million, border crossers up to $10,000 each

It takes money to make money, as the old saying goes, and apparently, it also takes money — as much as $53 million — to give money away.

Earlier this month, The Post broke the story that Mayor Eric Adams is giving out pre-paid cash cards to migrants.

Unusually for the mayor, Adams didn’t publicize this story himself, and his administration for nearly a month has failed to correct several public misperceptions about it.

One misperception is that the program allows the city to give out just $50 million to migrants.

No wonder the mayor has been reticent.

This debit card program — if you read the actual contract — has the potential to become an open-ended, multibillion-dollar Bermuda Triangle of disappearing, untraceable cash, used for any purpose.

It will give migrants up to $10,000 each in taxpayer money with no ID check, no restrictions and no fraud control.

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The Rich Get Richer: 50 Billionaires Got Federal Farm Subsidies

Think federal farm subsidies only help out struggling family farmers? Think again.

Fifty members of the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans  – banking tycoon David Rockefeller Sr., Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, stockbroker Charles Schwab and dozens of other billionaires – got at least $6.3 million in farm subsidies between 1995 and 2014, according to an EWG analysis. And these fat cats likely received even more subsidies through the federal crop insurance program.

EWG matched EWG’s Farm Subsidy Database with the Forbes 400 list.  We found that the billionaires who received farm subsidies between 1995 and 2014 have a collective net worth of $331.4 billion, based on Forbes’ estimates of their wealth.

Some of the other notable members of the 1 percent who got farm subsidies include Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, the owners of three professional sports teams, and the founder of the Bass Pro sporting goods empire.

Of the 50 billionaires, 46 grow corn, soybeans, sorghum, cotton, rice and barley – commodities that are eligible for both traditional farm subsidies and crop insurance subsidies. Only two of the billionaires exclusively raise livestock, which aren’t eligible for subsidies but qualify for disaster assistance.

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Virginia Senate passes bill to give Medicaid-style health insurance to illegal immigrants

A bill in the Virginia Senate passed entirely along party lines on Tuesday to give illegal immigrant children access to the state-funded comprehensive health care coverage. The “Cover All Kids” plan still needs to be approved by the Democrat majority House of Delegates before it will head to Governor Glenn Youngkin’s desk, where he will have the opportunity to approve or veto the plan. Virginia has about 251,000 illegal immigrants.

The bill was sponsored by Sen. Ghazala Hashmi of Richmond, who said that health care is a right for everyone. “We want to make sure that Virginia is living up to its promise to its children,” she said. “Currently, 88,000 children in Virginia currently lack access to healthcare coverage. Virginia stands at the 25th position in the country concerning uninsured children, this is a statistic that must be altered.”

SB231 bears similarities in eligibility to the Medicaid program in the state but states that it is to “establish a program to provide state-funded comprehensive health care coverage for individuals in the Commonwealth who (i) are under 19 years of age” who “but for their immigration status would be eligible for medical assistance services through the Commonwealth’s program of medical assistance services established pursuant to Title XIX or XXI of the Social Security Act.” Illegal immigrant families who are at 205% of the federal poverty level, or earn about $51,000 per year for a three-person family, would be eligible to access the health care.

This means essentially that the state is expanding a Medicaid style program to illegal immigrant minors. The bill also states that The Department of Medical Assistance Services “shall not disclose information obtained by the program established by this section to any federal, state, or local government entity, law-enforcement officer, or law-enforcement agency for any purpose related to civil immigration enforcement,” unless the individual consents or there is a warrant.

Republican State Sen. Glen Sturtevant spoke about the bill, saying “This session, Virginia Democrats have introduced bills that directly incentivize illegal immigration,” Sturtevant said. “They want to grant illegal immigrants driver’s licenses that are valid for up to eight years. Now, they’re also working to divert limited resources from low-income Virginians to pay for healthcare for illegal immigrants. That will cost Virginia taxpayers more than $100 million just in this decade.”

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NYC launches $53M program to hand out pre-paid credit cards to migrant families

Mayor Eric Adams’ administration will soon start handing out pre-paid credit cards to migrant families being put up in Big Apple hotels, The Post has learned.

The $53 million pilot program, run by the New Jersey company Mobility Capital Finance, will provide asylum seekers arriving at the Roosevelt Hotel with the city cash to help them buy food, according to city records.

It’ll start with a group of 500 migrant families in short-term hotel stays and will replace the current food service offered there, according to City Hall.

The cards can only be used at bodegas, grocery stores, supermarkets and convenience stores — and migrants must sign an affidavit swearing they will only spend the funds on food and baby supplies or they will be kicked out of the program.

The Immediate Response Card initiative appears akin to the state’s food stamp program, dubbed SNAP, which provides lower-income New Yorkers with a credit card to cover the cost of meals, and will provide funds based on the same scale.

The amount on each card will vary depending on the size of the family and whether any income is coming in, according to the details of the contract.  A family of four, for instance, could be provided nearly $1,000 each month, which comes out to $35 per day for food. Cards will get refilled every 28 days.

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20 Percent of Welfare Spending Goes to the Households Taxed To Fund It

About one in every five dollars that passes through the federal welfare system ends up right back where it started, according to a new report.

It’s not robbing Peter to pay Paul. It’s more like “robbing Peter to pay Peter,” wrote the report’s author, Judge Glock, director of research at the Manhattan Institute.

As the federal welfare state has grown to a point where many middle-class and even some upper-income households receive benefits, it has become more common for the same households to both pay federal taxes and collect federal transfer payments. Glock’s paper shows how significant that overlap is: About 20 percent of the annual funds in the federal welfare system are simply returned to households that paid that amount in federal taxes.

And if you don’t count households that are receiving Social Security—the largest federal welfare program, even though it is rarely identified as such—the percentage of welfare payments canceled out by taxes within the same year is 29 percent, Glock’s research shows.

Seems like those individuals and families would be better off simply not paying so much in taxes in the first place.

“Such a system of taxing and returning the same amount of money is a pure waste,” Glock wrote, “since both the taxes and transfers limit households’ options, and there is a bureaucratic cost to circulating income from households to the government and back to households.”

Economically, those transfers and taxes simply cancel each other out and households are left—on a balance sheet, at least—no worse off than if the money had never been taken by the government and then returned.

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Maryland Medicaid Will Now Cover Sex Change Procedures and Treatments – Even Voice Lessons and Hair Removal

Maryland will now cover an unprecedented number of sex change procedures and treatments through the taxpayer-funded Medicaid program.

Even hair removal and voice lessons for transgender people can be covered.

A law that went into effect in the state on January 1 requires Medicaid to cover “gender-affirming treatment in a nondiscriminatory manner.”

This includes breast implants, fertility preservation services, facial cosmetic surgeries, hair alterations, and much more.

According to a report from the far-left LGBTQ Nation, “Voice therapy and lessons, scar and hair removal, hormone therapy, puberty blockers, fertility preservation, and ‘alterations’ to the abdomen, genitals, chest, buttocks, neck, and face are all included. Patients cannot be denied unless a healthcare professional decides the treatment would be detrimental to their health.”

Detransition procedures will also be covered.

Maryland Medicaid already covered mental health services, hormone replacement therapy, and sex change surgeries.

A transgender biological male who uses the name “Renee Lau” told CBS News that he is planning to take advantage of the change.

“I plan on having some surgeries and having consultations within the next two months. I would not believe the relief it is for me, because I never could have paid for [these services] out of pocket,” Lau said.

“It’s an emotional relief,” he added.

According to the report, “There are around 24,000 transgender adults in Maryland, according to research from UCLA’s Williams Institute. Of those, around 6,000 are enrolled in Medicaid.”

Maryland Governor Wed Moore signed an executive order protecting sex change treatments during a Pride event in the state last year.

“In the state of Maryland, nobody should have to justify their own humanity,” Moore said while signing the order.

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Welfare Is Great—for the Welfare Bureaucrats

A few months ago, Christie Gardner’s apartment was wrecked by a fire. Now she’s living with the damage left by the fire, smoke, water, and the firemen who helped save her apartment. “It’s a total disaster right now,” says Gardner. “They broke up all my bookshelves, my computer.” To make matters worse, her electricity has been turned off, so she has to get by with just a few battery-operated lamps and the waning hours of daylight.

But Gardner is no stranger to suffering. The six decade-plus resident of Washington, D.C., was forced to quit her job as a certified nursing assistant after she suffered from a workplace injury that left her needing a hip replacement. Still, Gardner remains positive, always reminding herself and those around her: “It will get better. God is good.”

Gardner now spends her time advocating for her community, volunteering for several nonprofit organizations, attending doctor appointments—and fighting the D.C. government for welfare benefits.

Like many in D.C. and throughout the country, Gardner has fallen over a welfare benefit cliff—it’s what happens when someone suddenly loses benefits because a slight increase in income pushes them over the welfare program’s income-eligibility threshold.

Since 2020, Gardner has seen some of her welfare benefits decline roughly 90 percent despite still being on disability. Among other changes, since 2020 her monthly SNAP benefits have decreased from almost $300 to just $30. Despite her best efforts, she has been unable to determine the precise cause of these reductions, though she says she thinks it could be due to her becoming eligible for and receiving Medicaid.

She turned to a local nonprofit, Bread for the City, that aims to empower low-income Washingtonians to escape poverty by providing food, clothing, medical care, and legal and social services. The organization also advocates for their clients by soliciting the D.C. government for needed reforms and by helping them understand what welfare programs they qualify for, how to apply, and how to avoid falling over their benefit cliffs.

The bureaucracy surrounding welfare programs makes them very expensive, inefficient, and confusing to navigate—costing taxpayers a lot of money while failing to provide meaningful help to those that are struggling economically. 

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