A year after President Donald Trump signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” to cut taxes and slash spending on healthcare and other programs aimed at helping lower income Americans, Democrats in Arizona are sounding the alarm over its impacts on families in the Grand Canyon State.
And the ability of people to access public assistance, they said, will only worsen unless voters award the party a majority in Congress in this year’s elections.
The tax and spending plan cut billions from Medicaid healthcare programs and enshrined stricter eligibility requirements for both state Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides food aid to tens of millions of people. In the Grand Canyon State, that led to more than 300,000 people losing SNAP benefits in six months.
U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton called the fiscal plan an “ugly disaster” for Arizonans, and lambasted the refusal of Congressional Republicans to renew healthcare premium tax credits. The Phoenix Democrat blamed the GOP’s unwillingness to bolster public assistance programs for both the state’s plummeting healthcare coverage rates and declining enrollment in SNAP .
A February analysis found that there were 65,881 fewer people enrolled in an Affordable Care Act Plan compared to the same time in 2025.
“Sixty-five thousand of our fellow Arizonans had coverage last year and don’t today,” Stanton said. “That means people are skipping basic checkups, skipping prescriptions and praying that they don’t get sick.”
That number has since grown to more than 121,000, which health policy experts attribute to rising insurance premiums and the expiration of federal subsidies that previously helped offset that cost. And public health advocates fear even more people will become uninsured as new rules for the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, the state’s Medicaid plan, kick in next year.
One in four Arizonans rely on AHCCCS to afford their medical care. But new work and income requirements and a complicated documentation process in the “One Big Beautiful Bill” threaten to imperil that coverage for the 1.8 million Arizonans who are enrolled in the program. Changes to what constitutes a fragile medical condition mean that people with cancer undergoing chemotherapy or with substance abuse disorders undergoing treatment will have to prove they can’t work and deserve to continue receiving healthcare coverage.
Mike Renaud, the chief executive officer of Valle del Sol, a local community health center, criticized the new rules and application as burdensome and pointed out that the vast majority of AHCCCS recipients already work or are in college.
“They’re servers, they’re working part-time, they’re working at Home Depot, they’re working 30 hours a week — just enough to get by but not enough to carry high quality insurance,” he said. “AHCCCS is their lifeline.”
Renaud shared that many patients have expressed concerns that they may need to forego treatment to meet the new work requirements.
“I’ve talked to hundreds of our own patients who are in treatment programs wondering, ‘Do I have to choose between working now and my health coverage and getting the treatment services I need? And how do I make that choice?’” he said.
Stanton called on congressional Republicans to support an effort to extend premium tax credits for three more years and reverse the Medicaid cuts passed last year. In January, Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives successfully passed a three-year extension, with the help of 17 Republicans. But the U.S. Senate has yet to take up the legislation.
Even if both chambers agree to extend the tax credits, however, it’s unlikely that Trump would approve of the plan. Debate over whether to renew the credits last year in exchange for an end to a looming government shutdown put both parties at odds, even as the public overwhelmingly favored an extension.
Stanton said he still believes a bipartisan solution on premium tax credits and medicaid funding is possible. But he conceded that changing party control of Congress would be a more certain resolution.
“We know the odds that we’re up against, but the fact is, they could do it, and we’re encouraging them to do it,” he said. “And then, if and when we win the majority, we’re going to do it.”
U.S. Rep. Yassamin Ansari, another Phoenix Democrat, posited that the political pressure facing Republicans at both the state and national levels in the upcoming election could be enough to prompt a legislative shift. While last year’s federal budget increased the number of times Medicaid enrollees must renew their eligibility to twice a year, the GOP-legislative majority in Arizona pushed for and won four annual verifications for AHCCCS recipients.
“Flipping the (Arizona) legislature is so important,” Ansari said. “Fighting back at every level is going to be critical.”
Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com.
