Governor picks Trump over your health, job, life

Gov. Doug Ducey appears determined to turn a win-win situation for himself into a lose-lose. He’s sticking with his support of the now-failed GrahamCassidy bill that would have repealed the Affordable Care Act and been a total disaster for Arizona. Costing us money.

Costing us jobs.

Costing us lives.

When the U.S. Senate, thanks in great part to Sen. John McCain, refused to go along with the latest scheme to blindly repeal “Obamacare,” it saved hundreds of thousands of Arizonans from losing health care. It may have saved the state from losing about $1.7 billion. And it may have saved the jobs of about 21,000 Arizona citizens.

And it also saved Ducey — who actually supported this monstrosity — from having to answer to citizens for this weak-kneed political bow to President Donald Trump.

Ducey is a man with political ambitions who didn’t want to get in the bad graces of the president. Or worse, he maybe wanted to get in the president’s good graces. (Such as they are.) Not for your sake, but for his. However, because the Senate killed the bill, Ducey was saved from having to explain his disastrous support for the legislation while at the same time appeasing Trump, which apparently means more to him than the jobs and lives of Arizonans.

Instead, Ducey appears to have doubled down. He spoke of wishing the bill had passed so that there would be block grants of money to states and a return of health-care to local control.

Only it wouldn’t be enough money. And local control would lead to more people without care.

In his statement opposing GrahamCassidy McCain said, “As I have repeatedly stressed, health-care reform legislation ought to be the product of regular order in the Senate. Committees of jurisdiction should mark up legislation with input from all committee members, and send their bill to the floor for debate and amendment. That is the only way we might achieve bipartisan consensus on lasting reform, without which a policy that affects onefifth of our economy and every single American family will be subject to reversal with every change of administration and congressional majority.” He’s right.

This is too important to not allow all of the stakeholders to be heard.

The American Medical Association and the American Hospital Association came out strongly against the bill. As did life-saving patient-advocate organizations that include ALS Association, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, American Diabetes Association, American Heart Association, American Lung Association, Arthritis Foundation, Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, , March of Dimes, National Health Council, National Multiple Sclerosis Society, and more.

Ducey knew all this. And instead of siding with the experts, advocates and Arizonans, he sided with … Trump.