The LA Times notes:

The law, which took effect July 1, requires new applicants and current beneficiaries to submit such documents as passports to establish their legal right to benefits. But many of the 50 million people covered by Medicaid lack such documentation, and advocates and state officials feared that as many as 3 million could lose benefits.

The estimate is that about 10% of recipients won't be able to present such documentation. The current procedure is that those who can't must sign a form attesting to their citizenship under penalty of perjury.

But surely there must have been a great deal of fraud?

Although the new law is estimated to generate some modest savings for taxpayers, federal and state officials have said that there is no evidence of widespread Medicaid fraud by immigrants, whether legal or undocumented. Illegal immigrants in particular run the risk of being discovered and deported if they apply for government benefits.

This is part of a larger pattern - the VA, for example, being instructed not to tell veterans about the programs available to them, in order to save money.

The government is under a great deal of pressure from tax cuts meant for the rich, and from the cost of the war. Every dollar they can find, chiseled out of someone who is poor and doesn't vote for them anyway, is a dollar they can spend on military pork, or give away to their core constituency - the rich.

This isn't hyperbole, it's backed up by a constant pattern of chintzy little moves designed to save a few million here or there, by taking money away from those who aren't organized enough to have an effective way to fight back.

Medicaid recipients so marginal to the system that they don't even have a birth certificate, are so marginal that no attention need be paid to any possibility of backlash from them.

You can have your war, and you fantastically rich people - or you can take care of the old and the sick. There isn't enough money for both.