Fox's Brian Kilmeade rants against California offering Medicaid coverage to young undocumented immigrants
Kilmeade complains: "Now they get free dental, health care. They get checkups. Maybe they're going to get free physicals."
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
From the June 10 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:
AINSLEY EARHARDT (CO-HOST): If you are one of these migrants, they're getting word, go to California because you'll get free healthcare benefits. They're going to vote -- the legislature's going to vote this week. They are pushing free health care for these illegal aliens, or illegal immigrants, ages 19 to 25, low-income adults. They're gonna -- it's going to cost $98 million to cover about 90,000 illegal immigrants.
BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): Is that where you want your taxpayer dollars going, to people that snuck in here illegally, are milking the system, and now they get additional, additional --
EARHARDT: Help and aid?
KILMEADE: Yeah. I guess they get additional benefits from basically sneaking into California. And what -- you know, how do you feel right now if you are doing it the right way? You're driving a cab, you're wearing a green card -- you have a green card, youwork in a factory, have a green card. You're hoping to play it right, you're paying all the fees, you're studying for the test. And all of a sudden these people that sneak in now get jobs, they can't be detained, ICE is pushed back, and now they get free dental, health care. They get checkups. Maybe they're going to get free physicals. They can play on their local sports teams. If you show up at a school, you get free education. What a great country.
STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): Well, you know, California is a sanctuary state. And so they know, you know, if you're living in a sanctuary state you know that when migrants do go to our emergency rooms, they wind up getting the health care anyway. State of California just figuring out OK, ee're going to go ahead and we're going to pull the trigger and we're going to pay for this out of our state legislature to the tune of almost $100 million.
...
EARHARDT: It's interesting that so many people are leaving that state and they're moving where it's a lot cheaper because they are not in support of that.
DOOCY: Arizona, Texas.
EARHARDT: And the homeless numbers, the homeless numbers are staggering.
KILMEADE: So the money that you need, and a lot of these have -- they need mental health care. There might not be money for a facility, there may not be money for rehab, there might not be money for doctors and all the programs needed to get people back on their feet. They were born in many cases with schizophrenia or other things, it's not on them. But it's on maybe society to help out a little bit. So that money, instead of going to them, legal Americans in many cases, they're going to illegal immigrants who sponge off the system and send their money back to their original country in many situations. So just understand, it's not between us and them. It's between California residents in need, and ones who don't belong here and need.
DOOCY: Well, it's what the state legislature decided and the governor signed it. So that's going to be the law of the land out west.
Previously:
Fox News zeroes in on a new target: the homeless
Tucker Carlson: Undocumented immigrants make us poorer and are to blame for hospital wait times