With his first full session as speaker of the House under his belt, Andy Tobin is feeling pretty pleased with the way things turned out: a balanced budget, money in the “rainy day” fund, and a second economic development package all signed by the governor.

Arizona Legislative Republicans did the state a disservice by pushing through a bait-and-switch budget that lacks vision, leaves kids of working families without health care coverage and fails to create jobs.

A plan for the federal government and several Arizona hospitals to jointly fund the state’s decimated KidsCare program has come to fruition, and enrollment for the public health insurance program is now open for nearly 22,000 children.

The Arizona Supreme Court is leaving intact an eligibility reduction expected to deny government-paid health care to more than 100,000 low-income people.

Senate Majority Leader Andy Biggs, whose son was stripped of his duties as a Gilbert police officer for shooting an unarmed man in the groin while off-duty in 2009, is sponsoring a bill to give disciplined cops a chance to take their cases to court.

With an uptick in state revenues, Gov. Jan Brewer is proposing to alleviate some of the pain the state’s Medicaid providers have been experiencing.

The governor wants to give a 3 percent rate increase to state health care providers, including physicians, behavioral health professionals and nursing facilities.

But one group that is among the worst hit by years of incessant budget cutting would be left out — hospitals.

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.