As states across the country are moving to expand Medicaid coverage to additional low-income people under the Affordable Care Act, lawmakers in Arizona want to take the opposite approach.
On Friday, Gov. Doug Ducey (R) approved a measure that seeks to tighten the state requirements for Medicaid eligibility, ultimately limiting public health insurance to fewer residents. The legislation proposes requiring the program’s recipients to be employed in order to qualify for assistance and kicking them out of the program after they’ve been enrolled for five years.
A nearly identical bill was vetoed last year by former Gov. Jan Brewer (R) — one of the Republican leaders who bucked her party and embraced Obamacare’s optional Medicaid expansion when she was in office. In 2014, Brewer estimated that a five-year limit on Medicaid benefits would drop nearly 213,000 adults and 253,500 children from the rolls. She said that, since all of those newly uninsured people would end up seeking uncompensated care at hospitals without any insurance to pick up the tab, Arizona’s health care system would be pushed to “the breaking point.”
Ducey’s office, on the other hand, released a statement on Friday saying that the new legislation will “ensure that we have a responsible Medicaid program that protect taxpayers and provide care to those who need it the most.”
So who does he think is going to pay the tab for all those newly-uninsured people when they head to the emergency room?
On Friday, Gov. Doug Ducey (R) approved a measure that seeks to tighten the state requirements for Medicaid eligibility, ultimately limiting public health insurance to fewer residents. The legislation proposes requiring the program’s recipients to be employed in order to qualify for assistance and kicking them out of the program after they’ve been enrolled for five years.
A nearly identical bill was vetoed last year by former Gov. Jan Brewer (R) — one of the Republican leaders who bucked her party and embraced Obamacare’s optional Medicaid expansion when she was in office. In 2014, Brewer estimated that a five-year limit on Medicaid benefits would drop nearly 213,000 adults and 253,500 children from the rolls. She said that, since all of those newly uninsured people would end up seeking uncompensated care at hospitals without any insurance to pick up the tab, Arizona’s health care system would be pushed to “the breaking point.”
Ducey’s office, on the other hand, released a statement on Friday saying that the new legislation will “ensure that we have a responsible Medicaid program that protect taxpayers and provide care to those who need it the most.”
So who does he think is going to pay the tab for all those newly-uninsured people when they head to the emergency room?
