Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs says Medicaid cuts passed by House Republicans last month will reduce healthcare access across rural Arizona and on tribal lands.
Hobbs toured the Flagstaff Medical Center yesterday. She noted that the cutbacks will hurt hospitals and degrade healthcare for all patients.
"Hospitals across the state are gonna have to start making really, really tough decisions. Their emergency rooms will be overwhelmed because that's the level where people will seek care, because they can't get care otherwise," Hobbs says.
Experts say as many as 750,000 of the nearly 2 million Arizonans on Medicaid could lose their insurance if the cuts contained in the GOP spending and budget package are finalized.
The impacts would also heavily affect tribal nations where access to health care is already limited.
Northern Arizona Healthcare CEO David Cheney joined Hobbs on the tour.
He warned that any reductions to Medicaid would force patients to put off doctor visits, and worsen health outcomes.
“That is really dangerous, and we saw that in COVID, where people didn't want to go in to their doctor. So they'd get some chest pain. Normally, they would go to their doctor, but they kept putting it off. They would wait until their big heart attack. So that is the concern we have is delayed treatment," Cheney says.
Cheney estimated about 30% of their trauma patients are covered by Medicaid.
