AZ Capitol Times: Transplant services are not restored in GOP budget

PHOENIX - Editor's Note: After this blog was published, the Governor’s Office explained that the money for transplants was included in the budget. In addition to the legislative intent language, the budget includes a clause that authorizes AHCCCS to fund the transplants using money appropriated by the Legislature. However, instead of restoring the funding in a direct manner, the budget uses a more round-about way, and only allows for the transplant program to be fully funded through June 30, 2013.

Despite perceptions they did, the Republican-led Legislature did not restore funding for certain transplant services in the $8.3 billion budget plan they submitted to the governor last Friday. If there were any confusion, it’s because the budget bill that deals with the transplant issue is, well, a little bit confusing.

Legislators inserted an “intent clause” in the measure, SB1619, saying they wanted the transplant services, which were discontinued by a law adopted last year, to be funded. But they provided no money to back up their intent. Neither did they authorize the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System to find the money within the agency for those services.

In fact, the bill did not lift language in statute that specifically disallows the transplant services, a decision that drove home the severity of Arizona’s festering fiscal crisis.

So what you have is a bill that orders AHCCCS to still not provide those medical services and then also says legislators wanted them funded.

What the measure appears to be aiming to do is give Brewer some flexibility as she tries to persuade the federal government to approve her Medicaid plan. The intent clause can be found in the section that also deals with Brewer’s request for a Medicaid waiver. In the waiver she submitted to the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on March 31, Brewer said she wants the transplant services back.

She said she would ask the Legislature to authorize their restoration. That restoration, however, is not in the budget plan she’s expected to sign soon.