House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it."
And now that the piñata is broken, we see it includes financial doom for the state of Arizona!
Arizona must drop a plan to cut its Medicaid program’s generous eligibility and instead pay an additional $3.8 billion over the next three years under the federal health care overhaul, state officials reported Thursday.
Arizona also stands to pay billions of dollars more in subsequent years than less generous other states would have to pay, even after increased federal funding starts in 2014, the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System said in a report.
Gov. Jan Brewer and the Republican-led Legislature included a rollback of AHCCCS eligibility to help balance the $8.5 billion budget for the next fiscal year. The rollback would have dropped 310,000 people, roughly a quarter of the 1.3 million people now served.
But AHCCCS officials concluded Thursday that the health care overhaul’s so-called “maintenance of effort” requirements require Arizona to keep its Medicaid program at current levels in order to keep getting federal dollars. They said the state will incur $3.8 billion of added costs for its Medicaid population before increased federal funding starts in 2014.
Way to go, Arizona Reps. Gabrielle Giffords, Ann Kirkpatrick, and Harry Mitchell!
03/26 01:26 PM
