BACK TO FEUDALISM IN ARIZONA?

Conservatives in Arizona have voted out of committee a bill that would completely eliminate Medicaid in the state.  If this horrendous law is enacted, the number of legislated medical deaths could number in the thousands.

Arizona aide: Ending Medicaid would cripple state
by Mary K. Reinhart - Feb. 23, 2011 05:25 PM
The Arizona Republic

Senate Bill 1519, approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee on an 8-5 vote, would end the nearly 30-year-old safety-net program, which now covers more than 1.3 million Arizonans, about half of them children.

The state would forego more than $7.5 billion in federal matching funds, and most of the $2 billion in state funding would be redirected to the general fund, with about $1 billion earmarked for the developmentally disabled, behavioral health care and the "medically indigent."

The bill's sponsor, Sen. Andy Biggs, R-Gilbert, and other lawmakers say Arizona and the federal government are far too deep in debt to continue paying for Medicaid, particularly as job losses from a brutal recession sent enrollment soaring and the program threatens to crowd out education, public safety and other state-government responsibilities.

The measure passed after 1 a.m., toward the end of a marathon meeting. It has a dicey road ahead and may not get out of the Senate. But it could find support in the House, where Speaker Kirk Adams has said repeatedly that the Arizona Constitution did not require the state to provide health care.

Biggs said he wanted to raise the alarm about the federal deficit and the "unsustainable path" of entitlement programs.

"We built this system," he said. "We're pushing one-third of this state to socialized medicine. The alternative is to kick it on down the road for another five years, and then we implode."