The Obama adminstration used a little political ju-jitsu on Gov. Jan Brewer and GOP lawmakers.
Brewer and GOP leaders had made a big deal about asking the Obama administration for a waiver so they could go forward with plans to kick somewhere in the neighborhood of 280,000 people off the AHCCCS rolls.
It was a smart play, because if the White House denied the waiver, it would allow Republicans to say they had no choice to cut K-12 education, universities, and everything else—and blame it all on Obamacare.
But it appears the Obama administration has been even smarter: Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius found a loophole that allows the state to get out of providing health insurance to most of the population that Brewer wants to dump.
But whether Republicans can go forward with their plan remains to be seen because the current eligibility guidelines were put in place by voters, which means lawmakers are supposed to go back the ballot if they want to make changes.
Brewer and the GOP caucus are counting on a pretty narrow interpretation of the law to say they don’t need to provide the coverage: They essentially argue that the law calls for the state to use “available funds” to provide the insurance and they say there aren’t funds available. Does that argument hold up in court when you’ve just found enough funds available for a ginormous tax break? Guess we’ll find out.
BTW: While we recognize that Arizona is more generous than most states, we’d point out that there are plenty of reasons not to dump the current eligibility requirements, including the likelihood that doing so will—according to studies—cost the state lots of federal matching funds that help support the health-care system along tens of thousands of jobs in the health-care sector. As the Arizona Chamber of Commerce has argued in the past, it’s also likely to force private insurance companies to raise their rates because they’ll be losing out on what amounts to an enormous government subsidy. (And that’s not even considering the impact on people who get sick and find themselves without health insurance.)
This article appears in Feb 17-23, 2011.
I’m a little confused… I read this three times and it still sounds to me as though Obama found the loophole that Jan Brewer was looking for. “(The Obama administration) found a loophole that allows the state to get out (I’m assuming “of” was supposed to go here?) providing health insurance to most of the population that Brewer wants to dump.”
So…how did the administration win if Jan Brewer is “counting on” the loophole that it found?
A wee clarification, please, Nintz? 🙂
To HalleyMac
Essentially Brewer asked the feds to provide an exception to the health care law. Sebellius’ reply was essentially you don’t need an exception since all you have to do is submit a different contract to the feds next year than you did this year. Essentially the state never needed to ask in the first place it already had the right to cut the defenseless loose and to fend for themselves.
HalleyMac,
What it means is that the State of Arizona has to act first, can act, and will be able to cut people from its Medicaid rolls as long as it asks to do so. Brewer was hoping for a simpler version of “No” that would provide a lot of political cover, but what the White House provided was a “Go ahead and submit your plan” that really means “Go ahead and look like heartless jerks who would rather pinch pennies that go to the needy than give up another opportunity to cut business taxes.”
What it really means is that the White House has better, smarter politicians than does the State of Arizona and its legislature.