Arizona Already Tried What the GOP Wants to Do to Medicaid. It Was a Disaster.
“In 2011, following the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, then–Arizona Gov. Janet Brewer cut the state’s Medicaid funding and froze enrollment. Arizona blocked new enrollment in Medicaid and only allowed existing enrollees to continue receiving benefits if their income remained below the federal poverty line and they turned in their annual renewal paperwork on time. A family that received a raise that lifted their income even slightly above the poverty line lost Medicaid coverage permanently, even if their income dropped below the line again the following year. Between 2011 and 2013, 150,000 adults on Medicaid in Arizona, nearly two-thirds of the childless adults in the program, lost coverage. Over those months I spent at the hospital, many of the patients presented their own horror stories after losing Medicaid.”