The Arizona Supreme Court will decide on Feb. 15 whether to hear a case challenging $1.6 billion in cuts to the state Medicaid system.

For years, Holy Cross Hospital managed to keep the doors open to the only nursing home in Nogales, despite losing up to a reported $100,000 per month on its 26 residents, all of whom rely on Medicaid for health insurance.

Arizona has a higher number of homeless veterans than most other states, in part because of the draw of its mild winters. More than 2,200 veterans are homeless in Arizona on any given night, making up one of every five people on the street, according to estimates from the state Department of Veterans Services.

Alarmed by the scale of the problem and the lack of resources available, state and private organizations are joining a national effort to make help available to those on the street.

The Arizona Court of Appeals upheld massive cuts to the state’s Medicaid program, keeping Arizona’s precariously balanced budget intact and dealing a severe blow to advocates who said the partial enrollment freeze violated voter mandates.

The Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association is suing the state and the federal health department over the decision to cut the reimbursement rate to hospitals and health care providers.

Three Arizona hospital systems are pooling their money to take advantage of a federal program that will cover nearly 20,000 more children under the KidsCare program while also providing millions of dollars to offset the cost of covering uninsured patients.

Those of us who watch the economic reports and fluctuating stock markets are continually asking ourselves, “What’s next?”

More than 14,000 low-income childless adults in Arizona lost state-provided health coverage last month, the biggest drop since the state froze enrollment in the health coverage program in July.

Arizona can’t deny health coverage to about 60,000 low-income parents, federal health officials said today.

The state had asked the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to allow the elimination of health coverage of parents whose family income balls between 75 and 100 percent of the poverty level.

Arizona’s hospitals will renew their campaign for a bed-tax proposal to draw down federal money, which they say would salvage coverage for thousands of residents who are frozen out of the state’s Medicaid program.