Who pays for John Kavanagh’s health coverage?
Posted by: Donna
I’m fairly certain that Rep. John Kavanagh (R-Fountain Hills), retired police officer and member of the Scottsdale Community College faculty, enjoys great health care benefits. And because he’s a Family ValuesTM conservative and Pro-LifeTM he couldn’t care less if poor people can’t see the doctor. It’s not like they’re real people like fetuses, rich people, and corporations are. John Kavanagh would like to give rich people and corporations more tax cuts while poor and middle class people pay higher sales taxes to backfill the cost. Kicking the poor people off their Medicaid too? Win!
Sadly for Kavanagh, the Democrats and Governor Brewer are totally trying to harsh his mellow with their tedious “legal arguments” about some bogus law that passed by the stupid “voters” back in 2000. It mandates that Arizona fund Medicaid for people making 100% Federal Poverty Level or less. Whatever.
Brewer, in her budget plan, said Arizona can’t afford to have more than 1.2 million people — about one out of every six Arizonans — getting their care from the public. She proposed taking the question back to voters.
Kavanagh, however, said that’s not necessary.
He is relying on a section of the initiative which says the expansion is funded by tobacco dollars “and shall be supplemented, as necessary, by any other available sources including legislative appropriations and federal monies.”
“As of now, there are no other available sources,” Kavanagh said.
“We’re broke,” he continued. “We’re $3 billion in the hole.”
The Gov wanting to take it to the voters isn’t going to go over well with the GOP legislators but at least she retains some of her Family ValuesTM and Pro-LifeTM cred with her willingness to boot poor people off health care benefits.
Speaking of corporations, here’s what I want folks to take away: The vast majority of people who will be thrown off the program are working people. They will be added to the already swollen ranks of the working uninsured, currently 37% of the under age 65 population in Arizona. According to the Families USA pdf I linked, 80% of the uninsured in Arizona are in the labor force. 60% of them are below 200% FPL in income. Now we’re looking at the possibility of over 40% of working Arizonans not having any form of health coverage.
But the companies that employ many of them deserve more tax cuts, right?
Give me a break.
One of the things I dislike about public assistance programs is that they effectively function as a subsidy to low wage employers. If you know your workers will qualify for food stamps, Medicaid, EITC, free school lunches and a host of other government programs, you can pay them as little as you can get away with and know that they are mollified enough to keep working at your burger joints instead of burning them to the ground. Which is why I find business owners whining about taxes and minimum wages to be incredibly annoying.
Unfortunately, cutting burger flippers off Medicaid won’t cause their employers to start providing them with affordable health coverage. They’ll just go without. Of course, if you are a person like John Kavanagh, that doesn’t trouble you. It probably enhances the pleasure you take in your nice home in Fountain Hills and your generous health plan if burger flippers are not getting to go to the doctor.
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Kavanagh is a mean and dim-witted man. The more pertinent question is why the LD 8 voters put him in the Legislature. Will the voters start paying more attention this year? Or are they too busy with Survivor and American Idol to find out what the candidates stands are on the issues? Or are they just as mean and dim as John Kavanagh?
Heard the perfect term for what you are talking about: reverse socialism.