Health bill risks Arizona jobs:
21,000 jobs could be lost if Senate GOP health-care proposal were to pass
The state would see Great Recession-type losses under the Senate GOP plan, a new report says.
Arizona would see Great Recessiontype job losses next decade under a Senate Republican health-care proposal to replace the Affordable Care Act, a new report says.
The report released Monday predicted Arizona would lose more than 21,000 jobs and nearly $1.9 billion in economic output in 2020, the first year that the Medicaid expansion’s health financing would be converted to block grants under an ‘Obamacare’ replacement bill introduced by U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Bill Cassidy, R-La.
The report, commissioned by Children’s Action Alliance and completed by economist Lee McPheters of Arizona State University’s Seidman Research Institute, sought to measure the health bill’s effect on Arizona’s jobs, economy and personal income.
In a conference with reporters Monday, McPheters acknowledged that Arizona’s share of the health bill “may be improved” slightly under recent amendments to the Graham-Cassidy bill.
The bill is congressional Republicans’ third attempt this year to repeal and replace former President Barack Obama’s signature health law. Hearings on Graham-Cassidy legislation began Monday in the Senate Finance Committee, though Republicans might not have enough support to pass the bill as Sens. Sue Collins and Ted Cruz signaled they do not currently support it. Arizona Sen. John McCain on Friday said he would not vote for the legislation.
McPheters’ analysis drew on two reports — one from Washington D.C.based Avalere Health and another from Arizona’s Joint Legislative Budget Committee — and applied an economic model to estimate the bill’s broader impact.
McPheters concluded that Arizona’s job losses in the health-care industry would ripple to private-sector employment for an annual average of 18,000 fewer positions through 2026, when Graham-Cassidy’s block grant funding for Medicaid and the individual insurance market ends.
McPheters said Arizona and other states would then face a fiscal cliff in 2027 when $8 billion in spending would be withdrawn from Arizona’s health system, resulting in the loss of more than 44,000 health-care jobs and more than 76,000 private sector jobs.
“That was similar to what we saw in 2008 as employment cratered and we loss 75,000 jobs due to the national recession,” McPheters said.
The report projects job losses in the health and private sectors would escalate through the following decade.