Lawmakers are set to vote today on a bill that would require hospitals that accept Medicaid to ask about the immigration status of their patients. The proposal includes a provision to let those patients know their answers won’t impact their care, but is rather intended to gather information.
Howie Fischer of Capitol Media Services joined The Show to talk about what to expect this week at the state capitol.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Good morning, Howie.
HOWARD FISCHER: Why are we still doing this? I thought we were supposed to go home after 100 days.
BRODIE: Well, you know, as well as anybody that usually is not the case. So and plus we love having you on. So there's that too.
So let's talk about this, this bill a little bit. It's coming up in the state house today. And as you've reported, this is not necessarily intended to preclude patients who are here and don't have documentation from getting care, more of just sort of getting a sense of what the state of undocumented care is in the state, is that it?
FISCHER: Well, the yes and no behind this is officially, Senator Wendy Rogers said, we just want to find out how many folks are using Medicaid services, Arizona Healthcare costs containment system, which is our version, you know, obviously talking about your questions of Medicaid and, and who's gonna fund all of that. And the idea being, well, if we know, then maybe we can lobby the federal government.
There are things we can do, because pretty much federal law says you have to provide care for people in emergent situations. The but part of that is, yes, there's a little thing saying on the form, don't worry, it won't affect your care. All I can reflect on is a parent telling a child, now if you tell me what you did wrong, there won't be any implications, and the child fesses up and the child ends up being grounded for two weeks or something like that.
I think there's going to be a certain amount of fear of people that now all of a sudden hospitals, which have been, for lack of a better word, safe zones, will be asking about your immigration status and I don't know if they can be convinced, "oh, don't worry, we won't report it to anybody, nobody will know, it won't affect your care," even though, you know, we may be sending follow up bills and we may send it to collection at some point for the difference between whatever Medicaid pays and everything else. I think there's a certain deterrent effect to it simply by asking the question, even with the assurances.
BRODIE: So, Howie, this is, as I mentioned, coming up in the house today, this seems like the kind of bill that maybe the governor would not be a huge fan of.
FISCHER: Oh, I think that she may see this as another notch in her desk, although, one of the governor's people said if I put a notch in her desk every time she vetoed a bill, I wouldn't have a desk left. You know, she is already up to 75 this year. She beat last year's record, which was 73 for the whole session. There's still plenty of session to go as much as it pains me to say that. Obviously, she's still far short of 143 during her first session.
I think the governor has said, look, what do we need to do that advances Arizona, that helps Arizonans. And she's going to look at this bill and say, how does this help Arizonans? How does this information help? There's nothing we can do with the information other than we'll generate a report and submit it to the governor and the president of the Senate and the speaker of the House, the total hospital admissions, total for people who are not here legally, and then what?
I think she's going to say, I don't think so. Now she may say, look, I'm going to work with you on immigration issues, and maybe this is a way of gathering information, but I'd say this is more likely in her veto pile than her I'll sign it pile.
BRODIE: So Howie, another bill coming up this week in the House that who knows what the governor's going to do, of course, but she has vetoed some bills dealing with cryptocurrency already. This would allow residents of the state to pay their taxes with crypto.
FISCHER: This is a fascinating bill. Now there are four or five crypto bills up this year. The one she vetoed last week said we can invest up to 10% of the assets of the Treasurer's Office and the state retirement systems into crypto. It wasn't mandatory, but it was sort of strongly suggested that we should do this with the idea that somehow crypto will keep us ahead of inflation.
Well, it depends on which time period you look at. It's sort of like the price of gold. There are time periods where investing in gold will keep you ahead of inflation. There are time periods where the price of gold drops and you're essentially stuck with a piece of metal that is behind inflation. I think there's a lot of concern about crypto for a variety of reasons. A, what is crypto? I mean, yeah, we all sort of know generically what it is. But it is artificial money based on what? Based on the number of, bit of crypto mining that people do can be adjusted. There's various forms of crypto like Bitcoin, most being the most famous.
And then you've got the politics of it. When you have the Trump family invested in crypto, I think there are a lot of folks saying, what exactly are we pushing here? Are we trying to push crypto to raise its price, to raise money for a political family here and there may be some very valid things about crypto against the quote unquote "traditional dollar." I mean, it's all artificial. I give you a piece of green paper with George Washington's picture on it and you assume that it's money. OK, maybe it's an illusion.
But you know, at least we have some common understanding of that. I think the concern about accepting crypto would be, OK, so if we accept it for payments, even if we convert it over, do we know we're getting the full value of it against the dollar?
I mean, it's nice to say, you know, we can take crypto and and, and do something with it, but are we really getting our full value or we're getting more than our full value and until a lot of these questions are answered, I think a lot of states are going to say, I don't particularly want to have the state using, accepting, giving out crypto coins so to speak.
BRODIE: Howie, very briefly before I let you go, does it, what are the supporters saying about why they think this is a good idea?
FISCHER: The idea is to stay ahead of inflation, you know, we have a situation now and we can suggest maybe that's due to the president and his tariff policies where the dollar has been weak, where a lot of countries which used to depend on the dollar, used to invest in the dollar, are not doing so. And the belief is that crypto somehow is a more stable form of currency. And again that may very well be true, but I think that the interest in it perhaps tempered by the question of what happens when we find out there's nothing behind it.
Again, if you want to invest in gold, fine, at the very least you have a piece of metal at the end of it. You're investing in crypto and all of a sudden the bottom drops out. What do you have? Well, I have a series of alphanumeric numbers and I'm not sure I can go to the Fry's market and buy anything with that.
BRODIE: Interesting. All right, we'll have to leave it there. Howard Fischer of Capital Media Services. Howie, thank you as always.
FISCHER: I'm sure my check will be coming in crypto.
