MONDAY: We're so old that we can recall....

MONDAY, JULY 14, 2025

...all that talk about Medicaid cuts: We're so old that we can remember all the talk about Medicaid cuts and the loss of Medicaid coverage.

That was maybe two weeks ago. As of today, the flooding of the zone has moved almost everyone on.

We're talking now about Jeffrey Epstein, and about the literal flood. With coffee prices already rising substantially, we're going to drop the 50% tariff bomb on the coffee fields of Brazil.

Also, President Trump has discovered that Vladimir Putin, who's always extending nice, doesn't honor his commitments about wanting to end the war. Plus, the Epstein client list, and the fury surrounding that.

Before that, we did have discussion of the Medicaid cuts—or then again, maybe we didn't. As we noted all last week, when the gang on The Five told the public this, no one said a word:

GUTFELD (7/2/25): [The Democrats] are the human version of hysterical tweets...They say, "Oh my God, you're cutting Medicaid! You're throwing, you're throwing the poor and needy"—

No, no, no! These are young, able-bodied people, and illegals. You know, this isn't a free buffet for people who could afford to pay for it. So enough with that.

[...]

PERINO: Every time a Democrat goes on TV, they add two to three million more to how many people are going to lose their health care. It's 7.8 million people that would be required to do these work requirements, and it's illegal immigrants. It's 7.8.

Yesterday, it was up to 20 million, even though that's not true. It's like a game of telephone down there.

Red America was given the word. No one was going to lose Medicaid coverage! No one except (possibly) some able-bodied young slackers—and a bunch of "illegals."

That's what Fox News viewers were told as the megabill neared passage in the Senate. Over here in Blue America, no one said a word.

How many people will lose Medicaid coverage? We can't really say. The estimates are educated best guesses by specialists. We aren't in any position to say which estimate might be wrong.

That said, as The Five kept churning their messaging that day, they never tried to explain why Senators Tillis and Hawley and Collins had said the thing they'd said.

Right from the start, Senators Tillis and Hawley and Collins, Republicans all, had voiced their concern about the people who would be losing their Medicaid coverage under terms of their own party's bill. If the picture painted by Gutfeld / Perino and them was accurate, why had Tillis / Hawley / Collins been saying that? 

Viewers of the Fox News Channel were never asked to think about that—and the finer people in Blue America's press corps never said a word about what those viewers in Red America were being told.

We didn't get to one question last week. We never got to this basic question about what Gutfeld and Perino had said:

Are illegal / undocumented / unauthorized immigrants eligible for Medicaid coverage in the first place?

We'd been googling that topic for several weeks, without achieving peak clarity. When we saw The Five sell their story last week, we decided to google again.

Was Medicaid coverage for "illegals" the target of the GOP bill? That notion had already been floating around for some time. On May 16, the White House posted this, linking to a report in Breitbart:

One, Big, Beautiful Bill PROTECTS Medicaid by REMOVING Illegals from the Program

The One, Big, Beautiful Bill is a generational chance to protect Medicaid for Americans by removing at least 1.4 million illegal immigrants from the program.

Read more in Breitbart:

“House Republicans are moving to block an estimated 1.4 million illegal aliens from receiving American taxpayer-funded Medicaid as Democrats struggle to message their support for the unpopular position.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee completed its markup of its portion of the budget reconciliation bill Wednesday morning after an all-night session which included a provision blocking anyone unable to verify citizenship, nationality, or satisfactory immigration status from coverage.

The committee projects 1.4 million illegal aliens will be removed from the program due to those requirements.”

That was the official White House post. Such messaging helps explain the calls which were popping up on C-Span's Washington Journal, including the one we transcribed:

MODERATOR (6/29/25): Kelly, in Clemmons, North Carolina, on the line for Republicans. Good morning, Kelly!

KELLY IN NORTH CAROLINA: Hi, Tammy! Well, I want to tell that man right there that his prayers have already been answered. Because they're not cutting Social Security, they're not cutting Medicare, and they're not cutting Medicaid. 

They are reforming Medicaid, and the way the cuts would be are not real "cuts." They are no more illegals being able to use them. That's where the cuts are coming from, OK? All you people who are American citizens, you will still be getting everything you were getting...

I just want you all to know there's nothing to worry about. You are listening to propaganda, and it's all propaganda from the left. Stop listening to it, you're hurting yourselves. They are trying to make you in fear. Have faith, not fear, and God bless you all.

MODERATOR: That was Kelly in North Carolina...

The caller was sure that no one would lose Medicaid coverage except for the illegals! A few days later, there were The Five, saying pretty much the same thing to the largest audience in all of our "cable news."

That said, is it true? Can unauthorized immigrants qualify for and receive Medicaid coverage? 

You can bounce around on your search as much as you want—you can go from the Kaiser Family Foundation over to Wikipedia itself—and due to "the complexification of everything," you may not feel that you've ever encountered a clear and accurate answer. 

Below, you see what Wikipedia says. Warning: 

"Nonimmigrant" is a technical term! Also, as the name suggests a "legal permanent resident" is not an illegal immigrant:

Medicaid

[...] 

Legal permanent residents (LPRs) with a substantial work history (defined as 40 quarters of Social Security covered earnings) or military connection are eligible for the full range of major federal means-tested benefit programs, including Medicaid (Medi-Cal). LPRs entering after August 22, 1996, are barred from Medicaid for five years, after which their coverage becomes a state option, and states have the option to cover LPRs who are children or who are pregnant during the first five years. Noncitizen SSI recipients are eligible for (and required to be covered under) Medicaid. Refugees and asylees are eligible for Medicaid for seven years after arrival; after this term, they may be eligible at state option.

Nonimmigrants and unauthorized aliens are not eligible for most federal benefits, regardless of whether they are means tested, with notable exceptions for emergency services (e.g., Medicaid for emergency medical care), but states have the option to cover nonimmigrant and unauthorized aliens who are pregnant or who are children, and can meet the definition of "lawfully residing" in the United States. Special rules apply to several limited noncitizen categories: certain "cross-border" American Indians, Hmong/Highland Laotians, parolees and conditional entrants, and cases of abuse.

Again, we're dealing here with what we'd call "the complexification of everything." Such complexification leads to a related phenomenon—the inability to explain anything the federal government does.

Based on what we're reading there, "unauthorized aliens" are not eligible for Medicaid coverage, though they may receive the benefit of "Medicaid for emergency care." That said, according to this leading authority, states do have the option of covering unauthorized aliens who are pregnant or who are children. 

Meanwhile, "refugees and asylees" are said to be "eligible for Medicaid for seven years after arrival."

Are refugees and asylees "illegal immigrants?" As far as we know, they are not. But like almost everything under the sun, this matter is so complexificated that there's little hope of ever untangling these threads.

Eventually, one member of The Five went where the rubber was racing down the road. Emily Compagno said this:

COMPAGNO (7/2/25): Why can't Democrats celebrate a win? Why can't they join together to celebrate and propel a vehicle that really would lift all boats?

And I hope that for all of them stunting for their re-election purposes, and clearly just to their echo chamber constituents, that they would remember what would happen if this didn't pass.

[...]

Hearing Democrats on their TikTok and saying these sort of slogans, you know—Sandy Ocasio saying it's a betrayal of working families...or worthless Governor Gavin talking about the Americans that will lose health care—why don't you back up to the two million illegal immigrants on health care in your state, which everyone pays for, which is why they're fleeing?

Compagno further reassured Fox News viewers. The bill was a win for everyone—except, it seemed, for two million illegal immigrants in California.

"Sandy" and "Worthless Governor Gavin" were just "stunting" for their constituents, Compagno all-knowingly said. She failed to explain why Tillis, Hawley and Collins and them had engaged in similar critiques.

At any rate, Compagno seemed to be referring to Medicaid coverage under terms of Medi-Cal, "the California implementation of the federal Medicaid program." The leading authority speaks: 

Medi-Cal

The California Medical Assistance Program (Medi-Cal or MediCal) is the California implementation of the federal Medicaid program serving low-income individuals, including families, seniors, persons with disabilities, children in foster care, pregnant women, and childless adults with incomes below 138% of federal poverty level. Benefits include ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance use disorder treatment, dental (Denti-Cal), vision, and long-term care and support. Medi-Cal was created in 1965 by the California Medical Assistance Program a few months after the national legislation was passed. Approximately 15.28 million people were enrolled in Medi-Cal as of September 2022, or about 40% of California's population; in most counties, more than half of eligible residents were enrolled as of 2020. As of 2025, about 56% of children in California use the program.

[...]

Lawful permanent residents (green card holders) are eligible for full-scope Medi-Cal in California regardless of their date of entry if they meet all other eligibility requirements, even if they have been in the United States for less than 5 years. Beginning in 2024, people without a lawful immigration status who meet the requirements for Medi-Cal are eligible for full-scope Medi-Cal. Previously, meeting eligibility requirements other than immigration status qualified them restricted-scope Medi-Cal limited to emergency and pregnancy-related services only unless they qualified for the Young Adult Expansion (YAE) or Older Adult Expansion (OAE), which allowed individuals ages 19–26 or those over the age of 50 full-scope benefits regardless of immigration status.

On the one hand, that passage almost seems to say that "people without a lawful immigration status who meet the requirements for Medi-Cal are eligible for full-scope Medi-Cal." Elsewhere, though, we've read that the six (6) states which offer this type of coverage to unauthorized immigrants are doing so only with state money—with no federal funds involved.

Also this, live and direct from FactCheck.org:

A False Claim About Illegal Immigration and Medicaid

A House-passed reconciliation bill would reduce federal funding to states that provide state-funded health insurance to people in the U.S. illegally, resulting in 1.4 million people losing coverage, according to a preliminary Congressional Budget Office analysis. But President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers have wrongly cast the bill as removing these immigrants from Medicaid.

Medicaid is a joint federal-state government program that provides health coverage for low-income individuals and families. People living in the U.S. illegally are not eligible to receive Medicaid benefits other than for emergency medical services.

“A state funded program is by definition not Medicaid,” Leonardo Cuello, a research professor at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy’s Center for Children and Families, told us in an email.

Professor Cuello continues from there, specifically citing the May 16 White House post. 

"A state funded program is by definition not Medicaid?" Does that assertion make sense? 

We're not sure, but if California is only using state money in its Medi-Cal offer, we don't know how the GOP megabill could somehow help the federal budget by shoving California's immigrant population off the Medi-Cal program.

No one is going to lose coverage except 1) a bunch of slackers, and 2) a bunch of "illegals?" Try telling that to Senator Tillis. who voted  against the bill! 

Also, try tackling the complexifications of this matter for yourself! On Fox, five agents were selling a message. As they did, Blue America's major orgs were all averting their gaze.

In conclusion, we used to talk about Medicaid cuts, but by now we've all moved on.