I had a strange day yesterday. I found myself having conversations with two people (at different times) who work in health care in AZ that are just waking up to the fact that our state is taking a dangerous path on the road to cutting healthcare, and they are suddenly realizing these decisions could affect their jobs. Like in not having one. One of them said to me “I’m not a political person.” To which, I responded, “Most people aren’t.” And then they said, “I guess it’s true, ignorance is bliss.” I guess, until it smacks you upside the head.
Call it cognitive dissonance or whatever you want, this is what got to me the last election; and why I tried to get so involved. I tried to tell people that the Republicans were using immigration to drive the election; and if that wasn’t bad enough, they really had much more nefarious plans for our state, like getting rid of government health care for poor, sick and mentally ill people in our state and turning every government function possible over to private enterprise.
I tried to make people around me understand that we are all interconnected and that, even if you don’t like politics, the decisions made by government affect you personally and everyone around you. Why do people think they live in a vacuum, and that you can hurt or cut off one group around you and have it not affect everyone else? Like education and healthcare.
Gary Yaquinto in his article the “Economic Impact of AZ Healthcare Budget Cuts Will Touch All of Us” outlines the facts from a study done by the L. William Seidman Research Institute at Arizona State University. The study was done for the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association, and shows how every job in AZ is interrelated and how the cuts will affect everyone in the state.
Those hard numbers, which reflect the far-reaching economic impacts of proposed cuts to healthcare are the reason why there is broad business community opposition to the cuts – the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association as well as the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and the Children’s Action Alliance have come out against them.
The state’s cuts would total $1.15 billion, but because of federal matching for Arizona’s expenditures, the actual reduction in public healthcare spending would be $2.7 billion. 310,500 low-income adults and 47,000 children would no longer have access to state healthcare coverage. That is incredibly disturbing in and of itself.
But the total economic impact would be even greater.
“For every state-funded dollar spent via the AHCCCS program there is a match by the federal government (often in the ratio 1:2 or 1:3 state to federal). Thus the total impact on the Arizona economy is far greater than the state-determined reduction alone would indicate following any state cut.”
“In 2011, the first full year that reduced funding might occur, Arizona employment would be approximately 42,000 lower relative to the baseline. Real Gross State Product (GSP) would be lower relative to the baseline by approximately $3.3 billion (2010$) and real disposable income would be lower relative to the baseline by approximately $1.74 billion (2010$).”
The aggregate economic impact of reduced healthcare funding over the 2011-2030 study period is a loss of more than 808,000 job years (a job year is the equivalent of one person having a job for exactly a year), a loss of $77.7 billion in real Gross State Product, and a loss of $47.6 billion in real disposable personal income.
It’s not just healthcare
Those 42,000 jobs lost in the first year of reduced funding alone would not all be healthcare jobs. ASU estimates that 19,556 private healthcare industry employees in the state would lose their jobs in 2011. Those job losses would trickle down to other industries – leading to 2,918 jobs lost in retail, 2,426 in administrative and waste services, 2,187 in construction . . . and the list goes on. In other words: all of Arizona’s employment sectors would be affected by the proposed reductions in healthcare spending.
http://www.arizonaic.org/...
It seems the AZ legislature is taking a dangerous turn in the road that, I guess in retrospect, I saw coming, but, even being an astute observer of politics, really didn’t think would happen. I should have known.
AZ like many other states has applied for a waver to change our eligibility rolls for AHCCCS, the AZ state HC program. Since it’s looking like we won’t get a waver, they are now talking about getting out of the federal program all together. They don’t want the Federal government telling them what they can do. They have already passed a nullification bill here, saying they can ignore any federal laws they don’t agree with.
In her written message to lawmakers, Brewer, a Republican, blasted the federal government for hijacking control of the state budget. Federal stimulus dollars as well as federal health-care reform, which have certain spending requirements, resulted in Washington, D.C., "effectively seizing control of every major component of our General Fund budget except the state prison system."
The governor's spokesman did not respond to a request seeking an interview with Brewer about her budget, which starkly painted her response to the federal constraints: Seek a way out from under federal rules so she can reduce the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, the state's Medicaid alternative, and save the state $1.5 billion over the next two years. She wants a waiver that would allow Arizona to drop coverage of childless adults and curb funding to some low-income parents, and blind and disabled people.
http://www.azcentral.com/...
If Az doesn't get a waver and does away with all mandated HC, then children will be cut, too. One of the people I talked to yesterday works for a pediatrician who says, if this happens, she cannot stay in business and will go broke.
People who work in education and HC in AZ are coming to the realization that what our political leaders do in Phoenix could affect them, too. A little late. Where were they before the election? Ignorance is bliss, I guess.
Educators in this state are freaking out, too. We are looking at massive education cuts, kindergarten has already been cut to half day; and they are going to slash all the way to the universities. And then, somehow, our lawmakers’ reasoning is, that if we cut corporate taxes, business will come here. Without good education and healthcare systems? I don’t think so.
“Ariz. hospitals rip plans for health program cuts” by Paul Davenport
"The cure is worse than the disease," said John Rivers, president of the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association. "The proposed budget does a lot of long-term damage to the prospect of recovery in the economy."
The association said the proposed cuts in health care programs would result in 42,000 fewer jobs throughout the economy, and they would burden individuals and businesses with higher health care costs, clog emergency rooms, and generally make the state an unattractive place for people to live and businesses to locate.
http://www.businessweek.com/...
Of course very few are paying attention to Brewer including more money in the budget to build new prisons in this state and hire more guards, even though private prisons cost us more per prisoner a day than state run prisons.
http://www.kpho.com/...
A state audit of the Arizona Department of Corrections found private prisons cost taxpayers more money per inmate.
The audit report says housing a medium-custody inmate at a private prison costs $55.89 per day.
The daily cost of housing the same inmate at a state facility was calculated at $48.13 a day.
While the rest of state government is taking big hits in Gov. Jan Brewer's budget proposal, prisons and public safety get new hires and some pay hikes.
The governor wants to hire 306 new detention officers over the next three years, at a first-year cost of $8.4 million, and provide an additional $55.2 million in capital funding, most of it through bonding, for maintenance and repair at the state Department of Corrections.
And, we are going to charge families to see their loved ones in prison. It seems in AZ, we want to put more financial burden on those that already have too many burdens. Big revenue there:
A new fee on visitors, estimated at $25 a year, would provide $2.3 million to help defray the costs of background checks.
"Visitation is a privilege," Ryan said. "If it's something that is valued and important to the inmate and the family. This is a way to offset some of those costs."
Overall, the corrections budget would see an $8.4 million increase, to $957 million, for fiscal 2012.
http://www.azcentral.com/...
There are many other options to balance our budget rather than hurting children, education and health care as Dana Neimark points out in an editorial “AZ Not Hearing All options Available.”
- Collecting taxes that are owed but go unpaid. We could restore hundreds of auditors and collectors. We could send tax bills to online retailers like Amazon who have facilities in Arizona but refuse to collect sales taxes.
- Expanding the state sales tax to personal services. It makes no sense to collect sales tax on shampoo, nail polish and dog food while not collecting it on hairdressers, nail salons and pet grooming.
- Suspending public- and private-school tax credits. Right now, we are cutting classroom funding while we pay instead for extracurricular activities and lowering tuition bills for well-off families.
- Restoring state income-tax rates to what they were in 1990. This would generate $1.1 billion each year for health, education and security.
- Eliminating the homeowners rebate in local property taxes for education. This policy costs the state budget and makes property taxes less transparent without improving schools.
- Joining Texas and other states to better match the length of prison sentences to public-safety needs.
http://www.azcentral.com/...
We are not even discussing letting people who commit lessor crimes out of prison, although many other states have done this, and the studies back up that they can be released with no threat to the community.
http://news.yahoo.com/...
I don’t think our lawmakers are really concerned as much about what is good for us as a state right now as much as pushing their own political agenda that says government is bad. Unless you are a prison, of course. AZ will soon be the state of prisons. Who wants to come visit a place like that?
So if you think being ignorant until your child’s school closes (we are closing two in my area right now) or until you lose your health care job because the state doesn’t want to be dictated to by the feds is bliss, well then your magical thinking works way better than mine.