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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.
The food service is part of CalAIM, Newsom’s multibillion-dollar Medi-Cal reform package. Signed into law in 2021, CalAIM directs Medicaid dollars to social programs like transitional rent payments and housing deposits. Newsom called it a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to completely transform the Medicaid system in California.”
The transformation is working. 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.
From there, the food shows up at recipients’ doorsteps.
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