Newsomnomics: Paying NGOs to Deliver Gourmet Food to Welfare Recipients

I suppose it makes sense to people who believe in equity. If people are on welfare, the proper response is to give them more than ordinary people get, to even things out. 

Or it could just be another scam to funnel money to friends of the administration, which seems more likely in the corrupt State of California, where every NGO is a parasite sucking the blood out of taxpayers. 

Read the full story in City Journal: https://t.co/gN8UHTrUaU

— Christopher Rufo (@christopherrufo) October 28, 2026

The indispensable Christopher Rufo introduces us to the wonderful world of Medical, which not only pays for the healthcare of illegal aliens, but delivers luxury foods to anybody of insufficient income who can claim that they would be medically harmed by eating non-organic food. 

Salmon, beef, organic produce, and Amy’s Kitchen meals: these are just some of the luxury foods that California welfare recipients can get delivered to their homes each week, for free.

Californians like TikTok user “Lupita” are taking full advantage. Earlier this year, she posted a video of herself opening a taxpayer-funded grocery box, apologizing to her manicurist as she unboxed it by hand. Inside, she found carrots, heads of broccoli, apples, oranges, celery, rice, lettuce, and more.

“Yesterday, I was like, ‘I need some lettuce,’ but the lettuce was like five dollars,” she said. “And look at this. Fresh lettuce! Thank you, God.”

She can also thank Governor Gavin Newsom. As part of his nearly $12 billion Medicaid reform package, welfare recipients—including illegal immigrants—can receive free, “medically tailored” meals and groceries, delivered straight to their door. They can get foods for free that would cost ordinary people a small fortune.

Living in California is expensive, and in some areas a family of four (do they still exist in places like California outside Muslim and illegal alien families?) can be eligible for Medical with an income of almost $90,000. 

For instance, if you are diagnosed with anxiety or ADHD, you are eligible for those "medically tailored meals" free of charge. That puts just about every savvy college kid who wants extra time on tests in the pool. All you need to do is find a doctor to sign off that you have a qualifying condition, and wham, you get free meals that are higher quality than those of the single mom working two jobs, or even the programmer making $90,000 in San Francisco. 

The most popular of CalAIM’s “Community Supports,” by far, is “medically tailored meals.” That program and a related offering send prepared meals or “tailored” grocery items to qualified Medi-Cal recipients’ homes.

The state makes eligibility easy. Applicants need a qualifying Medi-Cal card, a provider’s recommendation, and an eligible condition. In a 2024 presentation to a Los Angeles nonprofit, Andrew Barrier, a former executive of a California medically tailored food contractor, told his audience how easy it was to enroll.

“They’re not looking to push people away from the program, they’re really looking for people to be on it,” he said. “Step one is that chronic condition. This is really how most people come in, and they could have diabetes, pre-diabetes, cardiovascular, mental- and behavioral-health disorders—we’ve seen anxiety, PTSD, depression, ADHD. Again, the list is very, very long.”

From there, the food shows up at recipients’ doorsteps. Medi-Cal pays contractors to deliver the food for up to 12 weeks, after which eligible recipients can re-enroll. And it’s not cheap: across 24 weeks, between food and delivery, a single “medically tailored meals” recipient costs taxpayers more than $1,500.

The food itself drives much of the cost. California contractors offer beef, chicken, organic produce, and more. Barrier’s former company, Project FoodBox, offers Medi-Cal recipients Amy’s Kitchen meals and burritos. Over several months, these foods would cost ordinary Californians hundreds of dollars at the grocery store.

Jocelyn Salala, a chef living in Los Angeles, told City Journal that she signed up for Project FoodBox through Medi-Cal in April after she was laid off. She has since put the deliveries to creative use.

“I was constantly trying to put all these ingredients into my food,” she said. “I took the sugar snap peas and made a cocktail. It allowed me to think outside the box, and I was really only buying protein at the store.”

Salala, who also runs a website about Swahili food and culture, said the amount of food that came each week was more than enough for one person.

“It was a lot of produce,” she said. “I got so much celery. I still have some in my freezer that I use for broths.”

Admittedly, getting free food would reduce anybody's anxiety, and after a few cocktails, even a person with ADHD could think outside the box, if not well. But it's not clear to me that when most people think of subsidized medical care, they imagine a delivery service that includes free luxury food packages so people can stretch their cocktail budget. 

Of course, if you are a California taxpayer, you probably want a few cocktails every evening to dull the pain of reading the tax lines on your paychecks as you dream of taking that high-speed rail that will never be finished. 

sending welfare recipients luxury health foods raises obvious questions. For one, what happens after the state stops sending the meals? And is this yet another free-food initiative, atop the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program?

In California, the answer to the second question is easy: yes. About 90 percent of the people receiving CalFresh, the state’s version of food stamps, are also enrolled in Medi-Cal. At the end of his presentation, Barrier told the audience that such people could receive medically tailored food and keep their existing welfare benefits.

“This does not impact any of their other health benefits, CalFresh, food stamps,” he said. “The answer is always no if someone asks you.”

Companies across the country are cashing in on the Food Is Medicine movement. California-based contractors like Project FoodBox and Project Open Hand have raked in millions of Medicaid dollars. Between 2022 and 2024, companies nationwide made nearly $100 million billing Medicaid code S9977, an unspecified “meals” code that includes medically tailored food.

The nation’s biggest S9977 biller in that span, by far, was Barrier’s former company, Project FoodBox. Between 2022 and 2024, the California-based firm received more than $67.8 million from Medicaid. Since then, Project FoodBox has opened a location in the Bronx, where it hopes to advise “families and individuals” about “community-based services.”

Another large biller was California-based Hunger: Not Impossible, now called Bento Health. The firm billed Medicaid more than $7.7 million and describes itself as a “service provider that connects Medicaid health plan members with curated groceries”—in other words, Instacart with a personal shopper.

Bento will apparently send luxury food items to illegal immigrants. On its website, the company says that eligibility for its services “is not tied to immigration status, employment status, nationality, or any other factor other than your insurance provider’s eligibility criteria.” Bento did not respond to a comment request.

It's hard to blame illegal aliens for streaming across the border and seeking out every dime and dollar they can get from the government. If showing up at a government office entitles you to free food, more food stamps, rent subsidies, cash benefits, and medical care, you are a chump not to cash in. 

Of course, that makes the taxpayers who are scraping by the chumps, but at least in California, most voters seem fine with it. After all, the alternative is icky Republicans, and who could tolerate that?!

Feds bust $2B medical fraud rings secretly operating in California - as agents seen scaling rich doctor's mega mansion https://t.co/VDlVmZGq9k https://t.co/jBLJHR27yO

— New York Post (@nypost) October 22, 2026

Gavin Newsom, by the odds, is unlikely to become president. But only because the odds are bad for anybody. Of the potential candidates, he is near the top of the list, and this is one of his signature programs; no doubt he would love to extend it nationwide, and a Democratic Congress would just as likely do it. 

Imagine an AOC presidency, and it gets worse. 

Think of the billions of dollars that could be funneled to political clients! We could have nationwide Feeding Our Futures in every state, and Antifa Brownshirts getting fed well between riots. 

Editor's Note: The Democrat Party has never been less popular as voters reject its globalist agenda.

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