Ignorance is strength, and bliss, for Arizona Republicans on health care.
Posted by: Donna
Although the maintenance-of-effort requirement has been part of the legislation since Dec. 19, Brewer apparently did not become aware of this funding issue until Monday, when she was contacted by a Democratic state representative.
One of the things I like about the health care bill is the Medicaid expansion. Raising the eligibility to 133% federal poverty level means that a lot more people, including a lot of childless adults who tend to fall through the cracks, will get health care. But Brewer and the Governors and AGs of 13 other states are suing to get out of the maintenance-of-effort requirement, using a constitutional challenge over the mandate as cover.
As I’ve noted here before, most public assistance programs are really subsidies to low wage employers. Conservatives rail against them as “welfare”, seemingly unaware that the majority of recipients of Medicaid, food stamps, housing assistance, free and reduced school lunches for their children, etc., work in poorly paid jobs with no benefits. Despite the fact that welfare was reformed under President Clinton such that no one gets to luxuriate on the dole for very long, the notion that millions of layabouts are getting generous handouts persists in the minds of conservatives.
Which may explain why Republican legislators and Governor Brewer are so sanguine about cutting thousands of low income Arizonans off of health care and foreclosing the possibility of billions of federal funds to cover more people in our state. Most elected Republicans in AZ appear to be noveau riche movement conservatives. Even if they run businesses I suspect the whole “Medicaid = employees or contractors getting health care that I don’t have to pay for” equation doesn’t compute with them. I honestly believe they think that cutting thousands of people off of AHCCCS will only affect non-working people and won’t hurt businesses at all.
With that in mind, I have to ask, where is the business community on this?
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I don’t know if it’s still the case, but the last time we looked at the employers of AHCCCS recipients we found WalMart to have more employees and their dependents on Medicaid than any other employer.
So we know where ONE business stands on this: those low prices are subsidized by the state and federal governments providing health coverage for WalMart employees.
Yes, I know WalMart is the largest employer in the state, but that alone doesn’t explain the numbers. Banner has a huge number of employees in the state and very few on the AHCCCS rolls.
I don’t know why others haven’t raised this question. If the legislature is so upset about all those folks on AHCCCS why are they not upset with the employers who fail to cover these employees? Oh, yeah, the same reason they don’t press the employers who hire undocumented workers…..it’s much more politically effective to blame the workers.
Susan, Walmart was exactly what I was thinking of when I wrote this post. I know they’re not going to change their national business model in AZ and start covering employees here but it’s not in their best interests to have workers with no access to health care for themselves or their families. It increases worker absences and attrition and exposes them to more liability risk.