Arizona Mirror: Andy Biggs “Tried to Abolish Medicaid in the Grand Canyon State”

Arizona Mirror: Andy Biggs “Tried to Abolish Medicaid in the Grand Canyon State”

Biggs Also Compared Medicaid to Being “Enslaved” and Would Have “Abruptly” Ended Care for “Mentally Ill and Disabled Arizonans” 

New reporting from the Arizona Mirror reveals that, as a State Senator, Andy Biggs “tried to abolish Medicaid” in Arizona and compared it to slavery, saying funding Arizona’s Medicaid system effectively left future generations “enslaved” and “placed in bondage.”

The report continued that Biggs “said that some Arizonans with severe mental illnesses and developmental and physical disabilities would have to go without healthcare coverage.”

At the time, Biggs argued to gut care for “the nearly 100,000 severely mentally ill and developmentally and physically disabled people who relied” on Medicaid in Arizona in 2011, saying, “What did they do before we built the infrastructure?” and “You can’t even cover them.”

Even Biggs’ GOP colleagues in the Senate felt that Biggs was going too far, with one Republican Senator noting that “Biggs’ proposal would decimate rural hospitals that get a large portion of their budgets from Medicaid patients.”

This comes as Biggs has faced backlash for voting for the disastrous federal budget law, “which is projected to add at least $3.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, while also cutting Medicaid and food benefits for low-income people.”

In fact, a Tucson hospital had to shut down this year and lay off nearly 100 hard-working Arizonans because of the federal budget law that Biggs proudly voted for.

“Andy Biggs has already voted in DC to raise costs, rip coverage away, and close rural hospitals, but his record of trying to completely abolish Medicaid shows he’d go much further as governor,” said DGA Communications Director Sam Newton. “Biggs even wanted to kick Arizonans with severe mental illnesses and developmental and physical disabilities off their care. He must explain why he tried to destroy Medicaid and leave Arizonans to go without the care they need.”

Read more about Biggs’ record of slashing Arizonans’ health care below:

Arizona Mirror: ‘You can’t even cover them’: Andy Biggs’ 2011 bid to end Medicaid in Arizona 

• When Andy Biggs, the Republican nominee for governor, was a state senator, he tried to abolish Medicaid in the Grand Canyon State because it cost taxpayers too much to provide health insurance for low-income Arizonans.

• “When we allow the generations in the future to be robbed and enslaved to pay for the healthcare costs of people today, we’re not being good stewards,” Biggs said during an Arizona Senate Appropriations Committee hearing in 2011. “We’re allowing the future generation to be placed in bondage.” 

• As he called for the end of the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, the Republican said that some Arizonans with severe mental illnesses and developmental and physical disabilities would have to go without healthcare coverage to address the national debt and deficits in the state budget.

• “What did they do before we built the infrastructure?” Biggs said of the people who relied on AHCCCS.

• Multiple studies have shown that when Americans who need it don’t have access to healthcare through Medicaid, they are more likely to die.

• Biggs made it clear that his proposed alternative to Medicaid would only serve a fraction of the nearly 1.4 million Arizonans enrolled at the time. He said that another option might be to charge those people premiums to stay on the program, but that the enrollees didn’t “want to pay for it.”

• The proposal wouldn’t even fully cover the nearly 100,000 severely mentally ill and developmentally and physically disabled people who relied on AHCCCS in 2011, which Biggs said was by design because of the high cost to provide care to those Arizonans.

• “You can’t even cover them, because if you were to cover them, you have no savings,” Biggs said during a Feb. 22, 2011, Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on his proposal.

• Members of his own party on the Appropriations Committee were highly skeptical of his proposal. Even some of his fellow Republicans who supported nixing Medicaid, like Republican Sen. Sylvia Allen, saying that there was no way to responsibly eliminate AHCCCS in a matter of months.

• Moderate Republican Sen. Rich Crandall said he was certain that Biggs’ proposal would decimate rural hospitals that get a large portion of their budgets from Medicaid patients.

• But Biggs, who has served in Congress since 2017, seemingly doesn’t feel the same way when it comes to increasing the national debt for his party’s own ideological reasons. Last year, he voted for President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which is projected to add at least $3.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, while also cutting Medicaid and food benefits for low-income people.

• In June, Biggs voted against a bipartisan resolution ordering Trump to withdraw forces from Iran or obtain approval from Congress to remain there. The Iran War has cost the U.S. more than $40 billion since it began in February.

• In August, when the nation’s debt reached $40 trillion, Biggs issued a statement condemning “unchecked federal spending.”

• When Biggs made his pitch to do away with AHCCCS in 2011, critics and local media panned his dismissal of the impacts on low income people, drawing attention to the fact that Biggs could afford to live on an Arizona senator’s $24,000 a year salary because he won a $10 million American Family Sweepstakes in 1993.

• “Andy Biggs’ dangerous scheme to rip away Arizonans’ healthcare is clear: close hospitals, drive up costs, and abolish Medicaid,” Nicholas Simões Machado, spokesman for the Copper State War Room, told the Arizona Mirror in a statement. “Biggs has spent his career trying to take healthcare away from Arizonans, and his toxic record makes it clear he would put every Arizonan’s health and livelihood at risk.”

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