Kelly, biz leaders warn Medicaid cuts could devastate Az healthcare; Ciscomani rejects ‘outlandish lies’

Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly and Arizona business leaders are sounding the alarm that Medicaid cuts could “result in massive job losses statewide and and reduce economic productivity,” while GOP Rep. Juan Ciscomani says “outlandish lies” are being spread about cuts.

At a Medicaid forum convened by Kelly last week, Paul and Trisha Petersen sat in the front row with their 8-year-old son, Owin, who tapped on a tablet while he sat in his wheelchair.

Owin has muscular dystrophy and is autistic. He’s only recently learned how to use his tablet to communicate with his parents.

“About a year ago, he started using this device to be able to tell us what he needs,” Trisha said. “It’s a big transition from not being able to communicate in words to now being able to use this device to communicate. He’s made huge strides with these different therapies.”

The idea that Medicaid – known in the state as the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, or AHCCCS – could be cut by GOP lawmakers and the Trump administration “is definitely worrisome.”

Owin, said Trisha, “receives a lot of services, from speech therapy to occupational therapy to physical therapy. He receives weekly infusions and other things that are covered and potentially, could maybe not be.”

Owin’s parents were not the only ones worried about potential cuts to Medicaid. Throughout the hour-long forum Friday at Pima Community College’s district office in Midtown Tucson, different audience members got up to share their stories about their own health struggles or those of their family members, some of whom had developmental disabilities.

Kelly warned that Republican lawmakers and President Donald Trump were pushing to cut Medicaid by $880 billion over the next decade so they would extend the Trump tax cuts, which the senator called “a big handout to the wealthiest Americans in our country. Millionaires and billionaires got a big tax cut, but they are due to expire.”

“What they’re trying to do is take a benefit that lower-income and disabled people rely on and they’re trying to take that money that goes to pay for that thing, and they’re trying to put it into the pockets of billionaires,” said Kelly, a Democrat first elected to the Senate in 2020. “That’s the reality of what is going on here.”

But U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani said Friday that Southern Arizona residents who are worried are being fed falsehoods about the GOP’s intentions.

“They may be believing some of the outlandish lies that are being said about cutting Medicaid or cutting veteran benefits, none of which we’re doing,” Ciscomani told the Sentinel.

Specific Medicaid cuts have not been written into the budget framework that GOP lawmakers passed in late February to avoid a government shutdown and advance the Trump administration’s agenda.

But the legislation calls for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Medicaid, to cut $880 billion in spending over the next decade. As Kelly noted, “there’s really only two places they can go. They can go after Medicaid, they can go after Medicare, or they can go after both. It’s likely that they cut Medicaid, and those cuts could be significant.”

Ciscomani himself warned that the House budget plan would require steep cuts to Medicaid, shortly before he voted to advance it.

Az business leaders say Medicaid cuts would be ‘potentially catastrophic’

Despite Ciscomani’s assurances that Medicaid would not face deep cuts, Arizona’s top business leaders remain worried about the potential impact.

A coalition of more than a dozen Arizona business associations, including Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry (where Ciscomani’s wife, Laura, works as development director), Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Tucson Metro Chamber and the Southern Arizona Leadership Council, last week urged Republican lawmakers not to cut the federal Medicaid funding that comes to Arizona because it would devastate the state’s healthcare system, increase private insurance costs and “result in massive job losses statewide and reduce economic productivity.”

“Proposed cuts would shift billions in costs to states and healthcare providers and would have profound negative effects on Arizonans covered by the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS), our state’s health care providers, and the broader Arizona economy,” business leaders wrote in the March 20 letter.

SALC President Ted Maxwell called the potential Medicaid cuts “potentially catastrophic.”

“This isn’t just a health care issue — it’s an economic issue that affects every employer and community in Arizona,” Maxwell said in a prepared statement. “A drastic reduction in AHCCCS funding would create an economic ripple effect, forcing hospitals to scale back services, employers to absorb higher healthcare costs, and state budget officials to scramble for solutions. That’s why business groups across Arizona are urging the congressional delegation to stand up for our state and reject these misguided cuts.”

More than 2 million Arizonans get health insurance through AHCCCS. They’re eligible if they earn less than 138 percent of the federal poverty level under a state law passed during the administration of Gov. Jan Brewer that expanded eligibility as part of the Affordable Care Act, with the federal government picking up 90 percent of the tab.

But that expansion, explained Kelly, came with a catch: a trigger in the law that returns eligibility back to the pre-expansion level if the federal share of the match falls below 90 percent. That would mean about 750,000 Arizonans would lose their health insurance, according to Kelly.

“If the participation of the federal government for the expanded population goes below a certain amount, we have a law that says all those people are moved off of their health care, off of the Medicaid roll of recipients,” Kelly said at the Medicaid forum. “That’s the risk we’re facing.”

Tucson Medical Center Vice President of External Affairs Julia Strange warned at the event that if 750,000 Arizonans were to lose their health insurance, it will create problems across the healthcare system.

“We’ll see overcrowding in our emergency department as it becomes a de facto place for people to get care,” Strange said. “They will come in sicker. They will come in more frequently and that will affect every one of us, whether you have insurance, whether you don’t. We will all wait in line in the same emergency room. We will wait there together, and that’s what we’re going to see. We will see a demoralized workforce, because they will find sicker and more acute patients to take care of, and it will severely strain and threaten an already strained and weary health care system.”

“We need to bolster our healthcare system, not weaken it,” said the hospital exec.

Ciscomani said Friday he still stood by the Feb. 19 letter he co-signed with seven other members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus raising alarm over the proposed Medicaid cuts, even though he voted on Feb. 25 to advance the budget plan framework that calls on the House Energy and Commerce Committee to find $880 billion in cuts to programs under its purview. The legislation passed the House on a 217-215 vote, with just one Republican, Rep. Tom Massie of Kentucky, joining all Democrats to vote against it.

In that letter, Ciscomani said the same thing that Kelly, Strange and business leaders said last week: Medicaid was the likely target of the $880 billion in expected cuts.

“The House Budget Resolution proposed $880 billion in cuts to programs under the jurisdiction of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, with Medicaid expected to bear the brunt of these reductions,” the GOP lawmakers wrote. “Nearly 30% of Medicaid enrollees are Hispanic Americans, and for many families across the country, Medicaid is their only access to healthcare. Slashing Medicaid would have serious consequences, particularly in rural and predominantly Hispanic communities where hospitals and nursing homes are already struggling to keep their doors open. Moreover, the possibility of cutting Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) funding threatens hospitals that serve low-income and uninsured patients.”

In an interview with Tucson Sentinel, Ciscomani said Friday he remained opposed to Medicaid cuts (as well as cuts to the SNAP program and Pell grants.)

“This is something that I’m going to continue to fight for, and I’m not alone in that,” he said. “I think at least in that (Congressional Hispanic Caucus) letter, we had a handful of Hispanic Republicans that signed that. I know that there are more beyond that as well that have the same feeling.”

Ciscomani said he did support Medicaid legislation to “add accountability and get rid of the waste and the abuse and in some cases, the fraud in these programs, but we need to protect the core service of them and who they were meant to serve.”

But Ciscomani sidestepped a direct question about whether he would oppose Medicaid cuts that reduce the federal government’s share of the ACA’s expansion population and trigger a repeal of the state Medicaid expansion.

“My focus is to protect and improve the delivery of Medicaid benefits for enrollees, like single mothers, children, those with disabilities and the elderly,” Ciscomani said via email this week. “As it stands, improper payment rates in Medicaid have risen as high as 25% in recent years. If this isn’t immediately addressed, we risk undermining the sustainability of this program and compromising care for vulnerable populations. I am supportive of reforms such as work requirements for able-bodied adults and stronger eligibility verification, reducing waste and fraud, and prioritizing funding for those in real need. We can, and must, strengthen Medicaid’s core mission while safeguarding its long-term viability.”

Kelly told members of the Medicaid forum audience that they should reach out to Ciscomani’s office to try to persuade him to oppose cuts that will result in low-income Arizonans losing their health insurance. He recalled how the late U.S. Sen. John McCain blocked the repeal of the Affordable Care Act in 2017.

“It just might be an email to a congressman’s office or showing up at an event or making a phone call,” Kelly said. “Believe me, it all adds up when you consider the number of people that will actually do that is generally relatively small. Those calls and letters and knocking on doors and showing up outside of an office, whether it’s my office or Juan Ciscomani’s or (U.S. Rep. David) Schweikert’s.”

“I don’t recommend Gosar or Biggs, you’re not going to get anywhere with them,” he said, naming two other GOP congressmen from Arizona. “But it does have an impact, so please spend your time on that.”