What do you get when you cross the Corleone crime family with the Sopranos pulling off a heist even bigger than the Lucchese crime family’s multimillion-dollar Lufthansa caper in 1978? I dunno, but it’s got nothin’ on California.
If you haven’t already read Rick Moran’s excellent “Gavin Newsom, ‘The Celebrated Jumping Fraud King of Calaveras County’,” open that in a new tab, take a gander, then come back here. Because when I first read Rick’s piece, I thought, “That’s some massive theft going on, but how big is it, really?”
Longtime Sharp VodkaPundit Readers™ know I can’t look at the big numbers without nerding out a little — OK, a lot — and processing them into easy-to-understand figures that will nevertheless cause your jaw to drop like pulling a 9-G turn without your helmet’s chin-strap fastened.
So of course I ran the numbers, and… hoo-boy. I’ll get to those in just a moment.
In a strictly legal sense, there’s no evidence I’m aware of tying California Gov. Gavin Newsom to his state’s multi-multi-billion-dollar fraud problem. But if you’ll let me walk you through today’s shocking numbers, maybe you’ll agree that some sort of investigation is warranted.
Let’s start with Medi-Cal, California’s version of Medicaid — the state health insurance program for low-income residents, because the spending is both massive and chock-full of fraud.
When Newsom was sworn in for his first term in 2019, Sacramento spent an eye-watering $93.5 billion on Medi-Cal. Seven years later, that figure has more than doubled to $196.7 billion. But let’s be fair and account for inflation, since we got such a whopping dose of it during the Biden Cabal’s reign.
Even with Bidenflation, that’s still a 62% increase in just seven years — seven years in which California’s population actually shrank by about half a million people, or about 1.3 percent.
So after inflation and a shrinking population, Medi-Cal spending jumped by about two-thirds per resident, to just over $5,000 for every man, woman, and child in California.
But Medi-Cal is just for needy people — technically speaking, and stick a pin in that thought — and roughly 14 million people qualify for Medi-Cal coverage. So that’s $14,000 in benefits each year for everybody enrolled, and my research indicates that most everybody who is eligible is actually enrolled. Because with that kind of largess, why wouldn’t they be?
I’ll pause here a moment so you can ponder the fact that nearly 40% of California residents are considered “needy” enough to qualify for Medi-Cal.
A Medi-Cal benefit worth about $8,580 or so in 2019 (in today’s dollars) is now worth $14,000.
Poor Californians must have gotten super-healthy since 2019, right?
Well…
According to my paid virtual research assistant — that’s ChatGPT to you — on balance, “Medi-Cal recipients today are likely somewhat less healthy than in 2019.” Since COVID, Californians are overall somewhat more likely to suffer from chronic conditions like diabetes, mental health issues, or substance abuse. And needless to say, problems like those tend to be concentrated (if that’s the right word for nearly 40% of the population) among those eligible for Medi-Cal.
This is where you might ask, “How can California spend an additional $5,400 per Medi-Cal recipient since 2019, and get worse health outcomes?
Would you believe me if I told you that most of the additional money wasn’t going to health care for the needy? Or for anyone else?
Going back to Rick’s article for a moment, where we learned that Newsom’s decision to drop spending safeguards resulted in an alleged “$180 billion in fraudulent payments across several state agencies.” Needless to say, Medi-Cal’s nearly $200 billion honeypot is the ripest target for fraud and theft.
And that’s the low-ball figure.
Spending under Gavin Newsom might make more sense if you think of Medi-Cal as a benefit program for crooks that occasionally provides healthcare to those in need.
“Robbed blind” is the nicest way to describe what’s happening to California taxpayers — the ones who haven’t yet left the state — and the theft increased dramatically on Newsom’s watch.
Watch? No — that’s the wrong word. Because when billions are stolen, it seems impossible to believe that somebody responsible isn’t very well paid to turn a blind eye.
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