COVID-19 & Healthcare

Action Alert: delay House action on the budget for further negotiation

by

I have heard from Democratic state legislators that they and the “Medicaid expansion” Republicans are afraid they are going to have the budget “shoved down their throats” on Monday, and they are requesting that you contact the GOP leadership in the House and your state representatives to delay this vote for a few days to allow more time for negotiation of the House budget.

Currently, the House Appropriations Committee will hold a public hearing on the nine (9) bill budget package at 9:30 a.m. on Monday. The public can speak for or against the bills at this hearing (time is limited). The budget bills package is then scheduled to go before the full House for a Committee of the Whole (COW) vote and Third Read vote beginning at 1:30 p.m. Hence the “shoved down their throats” fear.

The Democrats and the “Medicaid expansion” Republicans want more time to negotiate additional funds for child care support in CPS, restoration of more public school funds, restoration of Highway User Funds (HURF) to local governments, etc.

Read more

What happened to not wanting to subsidize people’s sex lives?

by

After spending most of the morning being deluged with tweets by an angry anti-choice man letting me know that birth control is wrong and unnatural (as he typed his words into a computer in a climate controlled room), I see that the Supreme Court has ruled that school vouchers, that is public tax dollars for tuition, are legal in Arizona (and presumably everywhere else) even if they are for religious schools.

On paper, the lawsuit dealt only with a small-scale version of vouchers, one enacted in 2011 for students with special needs.

But the decision effectively ratifies the decision of lawmakers to expand eligibility to any student enrolled in a school rated D or F.

Potentially more significant, it removes any legal hurdle from a legislative effort this year to remove virtually all limits on who can get a voucher. A bill to do just that is awaiting a House vote.

Read more

Our bird-brained legislature and ‘constitutional’ chickens

by

gonzo-and-camilla-the-chicken2I really did not think this “meth lab of democracy” bill  sponsored by David Farnsworth (R-Mesa) (right) would ever get this far. ‘Constitutional’ chickens coming to a backyard near you.

But it has already cleared the Senate, and after yesterday’s vote in the House Government Committee, it needs only an affirmative vote of the full House before it goes to the Governor. Just wow.

This a rare occasion on which Rep. John Kavanagh and I can agree on something. I know! But even a broken clock is right twice a day, am I right? House panel moves forward on poultry bill, members calls it a matter of ‘economic freedom’:

Calling it an issue of “economic freedom,” a House panel voted Tuesday to force cities to allow residents to have poultry, a move one foe said means the state will “shove it down the throats” of nearby residents who don’t want them.

SB 1151 would overrule existing or future city ordinances that prohibit poultry outright or impose most other restrictions on single-family lots.

Gone would be how large a lot is necessary to raise not only chickens but also geese and turkeys, and cities would not be able to tell someone how far a coop must be kept from a neighbor’s property.

Read more

Hey Doug Ducey, don’t be coy about your health policy advisor!

by

It must be true, since the National Journal picked up the press release from the Arizona Democratic Party and published it online.

For Immediate Release: March 18, 2014 Phoenix, AZ-DJ Quinlan, executive director of the Arizona Democratic Party, released the following statement today regarding comments made by former U.S. Congressman,John Shadegg, a top healthcare advisor to Doug Ducey: “Last night during a tele-town hall conducted by gubernatorial candidate Doug Ducey,Ducey’s top healthcare advisor, former U.S. Congressman John Shadegg, called Governor Brewer’s expansion of Medicaid a ‘Ponzi Scheme’ and suggested that we should ‘get rid of Medicaid’ and ‘should not have a single government-run healthcare program, period.’ Government-run healthcare programs that Arizonans rely on today include Medicare, Veterans Administration healthcare, and Medicaid.”

Read more

SB 1062 and the Hobby Lobby case

by

Next Tuesday, March 25, 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the so-called “ObamaCare” contraception cases of Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, et al. v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. ( Docket for 13-354), and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corporation, et al. v. Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, et al. (Docket for 13-356).

David H. Gans, director of the Human Rights, Civil Rights and Citizenship Program at the Constitutional Accountability Center, and a coauthor of the center’s amicus brief in these cases, writes in an opinion at the Los Angeles Times, These claims shouldn’t have a prayer:

Are secular, for-profit corporations free to violate the rights of their employees by claiming that the law violates their corporate religious conscience? That’s the big question at the heart of the two blockbuster challenges to a key provision of Obamacare that will be heard by the Supreme Court next week. In its 225-year history, the Supreme Court has never held that secular, for-profit corporations are entitled to the free exercise of religion. It should not start now.

Read more