Someone please get Tom Jenney a valium. I didn’t think it was possible to get this upset over the poors getting health care but the President of AFP-AZ is simply beside himself with fury.

In its 2012 decision in NFIB v. Sebelius, the same court challenge that Brewer proudly joined, a 7-2 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal government could not withhold Medicaid funds from States that did not participate in the Medicaid expansion under ACA/ObamaCare. The expansion is entirely voluntary for States. If Arizona makes the mistake of voluntarily opting into the Medicaid expansion under ACA/ObamaCare, we will have only Arizona politicians to blame…

…Expanding from 100 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) to 138 percent of FPL is not “just slightly” — full participation in the Medicaid expansion would add 250,000 Arizonans to Medicaid/AHCCCS. More important than the fiscal cost to federal and state taxpayers is the human cost of railroading tens or hundreds of thousands of Arizonans into a low-quality, government-managed health insurance system. As the Manhattan Institute’s Avik Roy explains, “Studies consistently show that patients on Medicaid have the worst health outcomes of any group in America—far worse than those with private insurance and, in some cases, worse than those with no insurance at all.” Please read more about this crucial point here: http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/ir_8.htm and here: http://tinyurl.com/gottliebwsj

Be sure to read the link and see how Jenney gets increasingly, and comically, irate in his imaginary argument with the Governor’s office. Jenney can’t help but make it obvious to everyone that he seethes with resentment over anything the government does to make poor people’s lives better, but his attempt to disguise it by making the risible claim that people in poverty or slightly above it will be made worse off by qualifying for Medicaid than they are by being uninsured is shockingly disingenuous. The links are to Manhattan Institute research where they demonstrate poorer outcomes for Medicaid recipients than privately insured patients or those who pay entirely out of pocket for some medical conditions. Media Matters explains here why such studies are flawed and it’s a bad idea to derive sweeping conclusions about the value of Medicaid from them.

AFP and other conservative critics of the ACA Medicaid expansion propose replacing it with block grants to states, making vague promises of greater innovation and efficiency. But make no mistake, block grants are a humongous cut to the program. And Governor Brewer’s announcement is one more step away from that, hence the hissyfit.