The state's high court agreed Tuesday to decide whether a levy that funds Arizona's expanded Medicaid program was illegally enacted.

The Arizona Department of Health Services estimates that the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, or AHCCCS, Arizona’s Medicaid program, pays for more than half of the estimated $115 million spent every year on asthma-related emergency room visits and hospitalizations.

Arizona missed its own deadline to send a waiver to the federal government asking for work requirements for able-bodied adults on the state’s Medicaid program.

Breaking ranks, an Arizona hospital built with financing from Chinese immigrant investors is urging the state Supreme Court to quash the levy that finances health care for about 400,000 needy.

Arizona already knows what will happen if its Medicaid program falters. In 2011, the state froze enrollment for childless adults in its Medicaid system, leading to more than 160,000 left without coverage in a relatively short amount of time.

The new Senate health care plan would cost Arizona at least $2.9 billion between next year and 2026 -- and perhaps as much as $7.1 billion -- according to a new analysis by the Ducey administration.

A Republican state senator and representatives from business and health care groups are urged GOP Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake on Tuesday not to back cuts to Medicaid as part of a health care overhaul bill.

The GOP bill, backed by House Speaker Paul Ryan and President Donald Trump, would effectively halt Arizona’s 2013 Medicaid expansion.

Arizona enacted a law last year allowing the purchase of the opioid overdose reversal drug naloxone without a prescription, but access to the drug has been slow.

It took multiple hospitalizations for various ailments – and hundreds of thousands of dollars – to figure out what was happening to Angel Cortez-Pirie.