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Report: Obamacare Repeal Could Drain Billions From Arizona Economy

Repealing key provisions of the Affordable Care Act would drain billions of dollars from Arizona’s economy.

$3.5 billion in personal income, $5 billion in gross state product, 62,000 jobs — those would be the losses to the state’s economy in just 2018 alone. That’s assuming Congress scraps the marketplace tax credits and subsidies, the state’s Medicaid expansion and then Arizona gets rid of its matching funds.

Those are the findings of a new study from Arizona State University.

Lee McPheters with the W.P. Carey School of Business conducted the study at the request of a local advocacy group. He predicts it would send the state’s health-care industry into a temporary recession. That’s notable because it’s the only industry that’s grown year after year uninterrupted since 1965.

“Then there would be a modest recovery after that and then what we would see is a perpetually lower rate of health-care employment because of this withdrawal of federal funds,” McPheters said.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has said he’d like any repeal to come with an immediate replacement.

Will Stone was a senior field correspondent at KJZZ from 2015 to 2019.