Health-care law: Arizona tries new approach to get by federal Medicaid rules

[alp227]

Source: The Washington Post

Republican efforts to repeal or limit the reach of the new health-care law took a new direction last week when Arizona lawmakers approved a novel and controversial attempt to cut Medicaid for 280,000 of the state's poor.

The bill, requested and signed by Gov. Jan Brewer (R), empowers her to make a formal request, most likely this week, for a federal waiver to avoid complying with provisions of the law that prohibit states from tightening their eligibility requirements for Medicaid.

Twenty-nine Republican governors, including Brewer, have signed a letter calling on President Obama and congressional leaders to remove the provision from the law.

But Arizona is the first state to, in effect, play chicken with the Obama administration by directly requesting a reprieve and daring Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to refuse.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/23/AR2011012304319_pf.html

---

What's up with Arizona trying to skirt federal law? In April 2010 there was SB 1070 with Arizona setting up its OWN immigration laws (even though that's the responsibility of ICE) and now this attempt to evade Medicaid. Secession, anyone?

[forty6]

1. Balancing the state budget on the backs of the poor and the sick: 250,000

What twisted selfish folks Republicans are!

[customerserviceguy]

2. The law allows the states to request waivers

That's all this is. State budgets are very tight right now, if this waiver is not granted, then cuts will be made somewhere else. I doubt that anyone here would like where those cuts are going to be made.

It's tough times, and not everyone is going to get what they want.

[forty6]

6. It's only tuff times because of the Bush Tax Cuts and the effect

they have had on state and federal budgets for the last 9 years!!!

Why should the rich continue to get off scott free while the poor have to face threats of less health care?

[customerserviceguy]

8. Whatever the reason

those times are here. States with the worst budget problems (and already the highest taxes) are going to have to choose between raising taxes on wealthier people, which may well cause them to flee to other states, and cutting spending. Attributing fault is nice, but it doesn't solve the problem.

[Bandit]

9. One thing we know for a fact though is that the wealthy will not be asked

to sacrifice anything at all. Every bit of any sacrifice made will be by the poor and middle class. It is the American way.. We want to get trickled on..

[customerserviceguy]

10. At some point

Social Security will be means-tested. Then the wealthy, and those who bothered to save for retirement will pay a penalty. Will you feel better about that? Being as I'm in the latter category, I won't, but since I expect it, I'll be prepared.

[ProudDad]

12. Do you realize WTF you're saying???

You're saying that it's ok to let 280,000 of the poorest people in this state go without basic health care...

Including some of the best folks I know in this town...

That their only recourse will be to show up near death's door at the ER...

Which will cost this state twice as much as continuing their ACCCHS would cost us in the long run...

So that this fucking horrible woman and the bat-shit crazy fascist legislature can continue to undertax the rich and over tax the rest of us???

State budgets are tight right now because mother fuckers like this god damn state legislature WON'T TAX the fucking assholes who ripped us all off over the last 30+ years!!!!


Jeeeee-Zussssssssssss H fucking christ -- I get god damn tired of people on an allegedly "liberal" board trying to justify these fucks!!!!

:puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke:

[Doctor_J]

16. Yes, he does

can't figure out why he's a member here. His politics would be much more at home at freeperville.

[customerserviceguy]

19. I simply don't take the view

that government is like some big sugar daddy out there that has unlimited money to do everything everybody wants all of the time, and they're just being mean when they refuse to buy me a toy.

There is a lot of pain left in this recession, and there are a lot more people who are going to be hurting. Yes, I wish the well-off would pay more in taxes, but it's a tricky balance to raise those taxes, and keep those people in the state. They're the most able to flee to a place where the taxes are lower. You can't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

[customerserviceguy]

18. I'm not happy about it

but whatever other cuts would be made won't make anybody happy, either.

States have found that this is not the time to raise taxes. It's a good way to get yourself booted out at the next election. There's pain all around, I hear it every day on the phone.

The only thing that's going to fill state coffers is a rising economy, and we start to see that happen when the real estate bubble collapse is finished. You want to blame someone on this board? Blame the folks who think that mortgage foreclosure mistakes are like illegal searches and seizures. If you catch the cops in a technicality, they have to go away, but if you do the same thing with the mortgage holder, they just have to go back and do things the right way.

[madrchsod]

3. Arizona is a third world country...

[tblue37]

4. So is the rest of the US these days--at least for about 50 million citizens! nt

[glinda]

5. So when does Arizona request the removal of their Governor?

[ProudDad]

13. When the old white fucks who moved here to retire die off!

or the water runs out...

Which won't be long...

[Doctor_J]

17. They've had a Repuke legislature for 16 fucking years

and yet they blame Obama because their state is broke. The state is run by hate radio - completely. Lots and lots of guns, but nothing else.

[CreekDog]

7. Arizona's version of Medicaid barely covers anybody anyway

they've had some of the stingiest eligibility requirements for decades.

[ProudDad]

11. Here in the "meth lab for Democracy"

the New Mississippi...

A bunch of old white people who migrated here to retire...

Bringing with them their fear-based, right-wing, rush limpballs inspired paranoia...

(Like my ex-in-laws from my 1st marriage)...

And thanks to incredibly Gerrymandered districts...

Keep "electing" the most bat-shit crazy motherfuckers on the planet...

To work on the republican experiment in faux-governance by, for and of the richest 1%...

That's "What up Wid' Dat"...

And it's fucking weird living here and watching it transpire...

[fascisthunter]

14. shit.... the US is becoming like that

not just Mississippi... it blows me away too... the dopes falling for it all really piss me off.

[Doctor_J]

15. Since AZ is one of the biggest welfare states in the country,

we should simply cut them off the day they pass this law. More money for the real Americans who want to take care of the sick.