By Howard Fischer
Mail | X: @azcapmedia

PHOENIX — Republican legislative leaders are claiming there are at least 5,000 millionaires — if not more — who are getting free government health care.

Senate Majority Leader Janae Shamp said Tuesday the state’s Medicaid program is not conducting required background checks to determine eligibility. And the Surprise Republican said all that potentially costs the state “up to $6 billion a year in unnecessary spending.”

All that, she said, comes from a report she claimed comes from a company that does verification for the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System and another from an organization that backs President Trump’s agenda.

But as of late Tuesday afternoon Shamp failed to produce what she said are the underlying documents that led to her conclusions. That includes what she said was a report from the Patient First Coalition, which bills itself as “championing the Trump MAHA agenda,” a reference to claims by the president and Robert Kennedy Jr., his health secretary, that it will “make America healthy again.”

A spokesman for the Patient First Coalition told Capitol Media Services it also did not furnish a copy.

Shamp said a copy of the report was forwarded to Gov. Katie Hobbs.
But gubernatorial press aide Christian Slater said all his boss got was a letter from Shamp detailing the same claims laid out in her press conference. And he dismissed what Shamp said.

“These are lies and conspiracy theories to justify her party’s desperate attempts to slash Medicaid for hard-working Arizonans, no matter the human cost,” Slater said.

Claims about how AHCCCS operates are not new. A 2022 report by the state Auditor General’s Office said the agency does not do a good job of investigating potential incidents of fraud or abuse committed by providers or patients. That was during the administration of Gov. Doug Ducey, Hobbs’ Republican predecessor.

And auditors reported in 2012 — when Republican Jan Brewer was governor — that AHCCCS need to do a better job of investigating fraud and abuse to prevent the waste of taxpayer dollars.

But Michael Carbone, Shamp’s counterpart in the House, said there are issues about eligibility that can be laid at the current governor’s feet. And Exhibit No. 1, said the Buckeye Republican, was the decision by Hobbs to veto his House Bill 2449 earlier this year that wold have changed the program’s enrollment verification requirements, a bill he said “would have protected health care resources for the most vulnerable folks.”

The governor didn’t see it that way.

“AHCCCS already has a number of efficient and effective member eligibility processes,” she wrote in her veto message. “This legislation would expend state resources on inefficient administrative redundancies with no clear return on investment.”

Shamp, in the Tuesday press conference, said the situation is grave.She claimed there is information showing only about 23% of those enrolled in the part of AHCCCS that provides services for the aged, blind and disabled had their assets verified.

“So what that means is over three-quarters of Arizonans enrolled to receive this public benefit did not get the necessary review to determine if they were qualified to receive it,” she said. “Let that sink in.”

That part of the program, however, serves only about 388,000. By contrast, there are nearly 2 million Arizonans getting some kind of care through AHCCCS.

Then there’s the claim of evidence — also not produced — that more than 5,000 enrolled in the Medicaid program have liquid assets greater than $50,000. That then got extrapolated out to estimate that there really are 20,000 whom Shamp called “Medicaid millionaires.”

All of that, she said, potentially costs the state up to $6 billion in unnecessary spending.

“And I would argue that’s fraud,” Shamp said.

The entire annual budget for Medicaid is more than $25 billion. But with the feds picking up most of the price tag, the state’s share is less than $2.7 billion a year.

Slater said the claims all are related to efforts by Republicans to cut state and federal Medicaid spending in Arizona by more than $300 million, a move he said would put up to $7.5 billion in federal aid at risk.

“This reckless legislation would jeopardize lifesaving health coverage for 500,000 Arizonans while denying an additional 100,000 or more from coverage,” he said.

Slater also said AHCCCS is doing a proper job of ferreting out ineligible recipients, saying that the agency has removed more members from its rolls in the nearly three years Hobbs has been governor “than during any three-year period in the history of the agency.”

And AHCCCS records show that the number of people now enrolled is about 232,000 less than a year ago.