Ariz. Senate panel votes to kill Medicaid program

By Paul Davenport The Associated Press Arizona Daily Star
February 23, 2011 10:24 am

PHOENIX — A divided Arizona Senate committee voted early Wednesday to eliminate the cash-short state’s Medicaid program and replace it with a much smaller system that would cover only a fraction of low-income people now served.

The Appropriations Committee voted 8-5 to drop the program, known as the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System.

The program serves approximately 1.3 million people, or roughly one of every five Arizonans. A replacement envisioned in the bill would serve up to 100,000 people, including the seriously mentally ill and people needing long-term care.

The bill goes to the state full Senate after a legal review and discussions by party caucuses, but its prospects for passage were unclear. The vote happened in the wee hours of Wednesday morning after a marathon session dominated by immigration bills.

Gov. Jan Brewer, who has proposed that 250,000 people be dropped from program eligibility because of the state’s budget troubles, said Tuesday she wanted to protect care for the 1 million or so who would be left in the program.

The bill’s sponsor, Republican Sen. Andy Biggs, R-Gilbert, said AHCCCS is financially unsustainable because it serves too many people and strings put on the program by the federal government make it too costly.

Despite that, “there isn’t anybody that’s seriously talking about reform,â€