A bill is advancing in the Arizona Legislature that would require most Arizona hospitals to ask patients whether they are in the country legally.
Under Senate Bill 1051, any hospital that accepts payment from the state’s Medicaid program, AHCCCS, would have to include on patient admission forms a place to indicate citizenship status. The bill would also require the Arizona Department of Health Services to put together quarterly reports on the number of hospital admissions or emergency department visits made by patients who provided citizenship status or declined to answer.
Texas and Florida have enacted similar laws over the past three years.
The bill’s sponsor, Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers, said SB 1051 is simply about data collection.
“This is so that Arizonans know how much is being spent in hospitals for illegal aliens,” Rogers said during a Senate Health and Human Services Committee hearing Jan. 28.
Patients’ answers to the citizenship question would not prevent anyone from getting care and patients’ citizenship status would not be shared with immigration authorities, Rogers said.
But opponents in the hearing brought up current heightened political tensions around Immigration and Customs Enforcement and said people might not seek important health care if they are faced with questions about their citizenship.
“SB 1051 does not improve care, it does not lower costs, it does not save lives, it teaches people to be afraid of hospitals,” Barbara Esquivel-Garcia, a nurse from Gilbert, testified during the hearing.
The bill passed through the Senate Health and Human Services Committee on a 4-3 vote along party lines.
Even if it advances through the full Senate and House, it’s unlikely to become law. Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed a similar bill last year.
-
His comments come after the Arizona Sheriff’s Association accused his office of refusing requests for assistance from Border Patrol. -
The Arizona Sheriff’s Association issued an open letter calling out the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office over its response to the public safety concerns surrounding the border wall construction in that area. -
Thousands of refugees in the U.S. lost health coverage on Oct. 1 as new Medicaid eligibility rules took effect. In Arizona, unlike in most states, even children and pregnant women are being dropped. -
On Monday, dozens of agents swarmed a stretch of private land where the activists had been camped in and around a centuries-old cottonwood tree. Contractors tore down the tree and agents made multiple arrests. -
New research shows the ancient site is much older than previously thought. In fact, it’s now confirmed to be the oldest known scientifically dated geoglyph in the Americas, 2,000 years older than the first Pyramids built in Egypt.
