On Friday, The Federalist posted an article about how Medicaid money was spent.

The article reports:

Five states and Washington, D.C., funneled more than $1.35 billion in federal taxpayer Medicaid funding to illegals, according to a preliminary audit of the program completed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

CMS Administrator Dr. Mehemet Oz posted the results of the preliminary audit on social media showing California, D.C., Illinois, Washington, Colorado, and Oregon spent millions each on illegals, with California spending the bulk, topping over $1.3 billion alone.

That money, according to Oz, was spent “just in the last few months.”

The left constantly claims this does not, or even cannot, happen because it is against federal law to use programs like Medicaid — something meant for Americans — for illegals, but that small sample of states shows that states are defrauding the American people out of their own programs to the tune of billions of dollars.

That claim is even more spurious considering the Democrats are only days away from breaking the all-time longest government shutdown record because they care more about funding health care for illegals than citizens of their own country.

“Some want to deny that illegal immigrants are receiving Medicaid. Others insist it’s illegal for Medicaid to cover illegal immigrants. And others accurately point out that hospitals can provide emergency services to illegal immigrants under the program,” Oz said, noting CMS is intending to have the money returned to them.

The article concludes:

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations seemed to have alleviated some of the pressure from certain emergency rooms notorious for being abused by illegal aliens, as The Federalist reported, but Dr. Jared Ross, an emergency room doctor, said that illegals being kicked off Medicaid from the OBBB could have the unintended consequence of turning them toward emergency rooms instead of going to general practitioners using insurance.

Reforms in the OBBB are necessary to stop American taxpayers and communities from having to deal with the burden illegal aliens put on their health programs and institutions, but another major avenue of reform will be altering EMTALA to limit illegal immigrants’ capacity to abuse the system.

American taxpayers cannot afford to continue to support people who are here illegally.