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Last year wasn’t a great year for Arizona in the news. Although most of the previous year’s headlines dealt with Senate Bill 1070, a law that encouraged racial profiling, it really shouldn’t come as any grand surprise that in 2011, Gov. Jan Brewer and AZ lawmakers signed a law that will allow Arizona to ask the federal government permission to drop 280,000 people from the state Medicaid program.

Arizona is the first state to formally seek this two-year break from federal health care reform requirements, which is allocated by this Medicaid Waiver.

Under the pretense of cutting the alleged $1.1 billion gap in the 2012 Fiscal Budget, what does this legislation really do but further perpetuate our economic crisis?

Most of the individuals and families covered by Medicaid are of the lowest income bracket. With the cost of living continually on the rise, a paycheck-to-paycheck budget doesn’t provide much room for expensive and overwhelming medical bills.

The sentiment expressed in an article by Ginger Rough and Mary K. Reinhart of The Arizona Republic basically sums it all up, offering an alarmingly truthful perspective. “Beyond the human cost of cutting thousands of people off of healthcare, the loss of more than $3 billion in federal Medicaid funding over the next two years will cripple the health care system and result in widespread layoffs,” they write.

Now, there are numerous ways to look at this grim situation, and unless you’re getting kickbacks from the insurance companies or Gov. Brewer, none of them offer any real sense of security.

While the Tucson tragedy allowed for the media to continually spin content from candlelight vigils to placing the blame on inflammatory rhetoric or profiling the killer, they all seemed to fail to really stress the fact that Jared Lee Loughner suffered from mental health issues.

The scariest part is, due to his status as a student and his mother’s occupation, he was eligible for insurance coverage of mental health services.

Medicaid is unfortunately the only way that a number of people are able to afford mental health treatment, and to that end, they’re already receiving the bare minimum in terms of coverage and services. They are offered far less than most private plans.

Out of the 280,000 people that will essentially be removed from Medicaid services when this legislation takes effect Oct. 1, it is without any shadow of a doubt that there are some equally if not even more-so disgruntled and mentally unstable individuals within that group.

Do the preventive measures of stopping another troubled individual from acting on thoughts stemming from mental instability only extend to televised “condolences” to the family?

Part of being an effective leader is learning from past mistakes. As an elected official, Gov. Brewer and the rest of the AZ lawmakers should have the people’s best intentions at heart when making monumental decisions such as this.

A state where it is easier and more affordable to obtain a semi-automatic weapon than it is to get a yearly physical examination sounds more like the plotline of some amoral, post-apocalyptic, sci-fi novel than any reality.

Brewer had this to say on Friday: “I am mindful of the very real impacts these reductions will have, but given our state’s current fiscal situation and the solutions enacted to date, I truly believe this is Arizona’s only option to restore our fiscal stability.”

Or in other words, “I know that my actions will result in many people having to choose between eating and buying their prescriptions and an overwhelming loss of jobs in an already vulnerable economy. However, I already spent too much of the budget on keeping out them foreigners so, really, this is our only option.”

Talk about the Wild West legislation of AZ by e-mailing Ben at BKarris@asu.edu


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