The physician community strongly supports Arizona’s participation in KidsCare and hopes that the Legislature will take a strong stand for children by repealing the 2017 law and appropriate the necessary funds to continue to insure children.

Every day, we hear about threats to the health and happiness of Arizona’s children. We can’t fix every one of the problems, but we can easily protect our children’s access to health care through the KidsCare insurance program.

Advocates for a health insurance program for children from low-income families are pushing lawmakers not to let Arizona once-again become the only state to freeze enrollment in the program.

Defying both Democrats and their own Republican governor, GOP lawmakers voted Monday to cut income tax rates across the board to prevent what they believe would be a "windfall'' to the state on the backs of Arizona residents.

Called KidsCare in Arizona, CHIP now covers more than 23,000 children across our state. It has helped bring the rate of Arizona children with health insurance to a historic high at 92.7 percent. Instead of celebrating, families have been thrown into uncertainty as the fate of their children’s health care hangs in the balance.

With no immediate congressional action in sight, state Medicaid officials are preparing to implement a contingency plan to ensure that nearly 24,000 children of Arizona working poor do not lose their health care coverage this coming month.

Unlike other states, Arizona law says KidsCare will be frozen the day federal funding drops below 100 percent. Arizona is one of 12 states in the country whose CHIP program is paid for entirely by the federal government, which was a major reason we were able to get KidsCare reopened. Over 22,000 children from working Arizona families are now covered through KidsCare, showing us just how needed a program like CHIP is in our state.

A family of four can bring in more than $60,000 annually to be considered low income for the state’s recently expanded voucher program, allowing them to access more funds to attend private school. But to be considered low income for various other state programs, like ones that allow the poor to buy food or basic necessities like toilet paper, the line is much lower, meaning fewer people qualify for help.

While the big ticket and politically charged budget items get most of the attention, there are hundreds of items that get little to no fanfare. Following are a few of those items.

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