By skyforbes 
There is a conversation to be had about who should get health benefits, who should provide them, and how they should be paid for.
That conversation cannot happen when officials and news organizations are being actively misleading and attempting to manipulate your perception of reality.
Take, for example, this Fox headline: (links are to archive.is)
That sounds like a lot of illegal immigrants directly received payments. That they got checks, and ended up with a lot of cash in their pockets.
That isn’t what happened at all. That’s simply not how Medicaid works.
Medicaid, like any other pays providers, not the people it covers. The people who got the payments were doctors, nurses, lab techs, and other healthcare providers.
Those immigrants didn’t get payments, they got insurance.
That insurance has value, but that isn’t the same thing as getting cash. Being covered by insurance isn’t the same as getting payments of any kind.
It’s tempting to think that I’m being oversensitive. Perhaps it’s just worded like that because it’s a headline.
It is tempting to think that, but you’d be wrong.
The article goes on and repeats the false, misleading claim.
“Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz announced Thursday that an internal review uncovered more than $1 billion in Medicaid payments to illegal immigrants across several states, a problem he says the Trump administration is now moving to correct.”
It’s not until you follow the link in that paragraph, scroll past another sensationalist headline, and then scroll halfway down the article, that they finally, plainly state the truth:
Republicans argue that “more than 1 million illegal aliens” receive Medicaid under the previously existing program that was revised under Trump’s landmark bill.
…
“While federal law prohibits undocumented individuals from obtaining Medicaid, some states use federal funds to provide unique versions of state-funded healthcare that permit illegal immigrants to receive health benefits.”
So there, finally, is the boring, complicated reality.
Some states had their own programs, that were allowed until the Trump’s OBBBA passed in July 2025. Some of those programs, which were totally legal and within the rules until three months ago alsoallowed undocumented people to get health benefits. Those programs cost money, and some of the money spent by those programs was part of those state’s Medicaid “allowance” from the federal government.
That’s still something to talk about. It’s something we can discuss. We can talk about who should get health benefits, who should provide them, and how they should be paid for. Whether state programs like that should be allowed, or should not be able to use their federal “allowance” for those programs, and so on. Those are good questions to ask, and discussions we must have.
But the reality is nothing like the claim that Medicaid gave payments to anyone… except for the doctors, nurses, and other healthcare providers who were just doing their jobs.
The irony, of course, is that the very headline, story, and officials making the accusations of “gaslighting” — the manipulation of someone into questioning their perception of reality — are themselves engaging in an attempt to manipulate your perception of reality.
Featured Image by Paul Brennan from Pixabay