Doctors don't usually spend their time warning voters about a candidate. But that's exactly what a group of Arizona physicians did this week about Andy Biggs.

On July 23, the Committee to Protect Health Care — a group of doctors from across the country — held a news conference urging Arizonans to reject Biggs, the Republican nominee for governor, in November. Their message was blunt: his record shows he will make it harder for people in Arizona to get the health care they need.

When doctors are sounding the alarm about a politician, it's worth listening.

What Biggs actually voted for

The doctors weren't guessing. They were pointing at Biggs' own votes.

Last year, Biggs voted for Trump's giant tax-and-spending law — the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act." That law is projected to cut federal Medicaid spending by about $911 billion over a decade — money stripped out of the program that covers low-income families, kids, seniors, and people with disabilities.

He also voted against restoring the Affordable Care Act tax credits that help millions of people afford their monthly insurance premiums. And he didn't just vote no — he claimed people making up to $600,000 a year pay no premium at all, a claim Arizona's Family found didn't add up: no one making more than half a million dollars a year gets the subsidies.

Arizonans are already losing coverage

This isn't a warning about something that might happen someday. It's already happening.

After the ACA tax credits expired, more than 121,000 Arizonans dropped their health insurance — and that number is expected to keep climbing. The Medicaid cut hasn't fully hit yet — most of it starts next year — but health experts project it will push hospitals to close and strip coverage from millions of low-income Americans.

In Arizona alone, as many as eight hospitals are at risk of shutting down or slashing services because of the funding loss. When a rural hospital closes, everyone in that community loses — not just the people on Medicaid.

Dr. Eve Shapiro, a Tucson pediatrician who has cared for Arizona families for more than 40 years, explained what health coverage really means in plain terms:

"Health insurance means cancer is caught earlier, diabetes is managed before complications develop. Children…get care for asthma, allowing them to be able to run and play safely with their friends, they get vaccines that keep them from getting preventable diseases."

That's what's on the line. Not paperwork — kids getting vaccines and cancer getting caught early.

His excuse doesn't hold up

Biggs' campaign didn't deny his votes. Instead, a senior advisor said Biggs voted for "substantive and badly needed reforms" to Arizona's Medicaid program, AHCCCS, and accused Gov. Katie Hobbs of failing to curb fraud — while offering no evidence to back up the claim.

That's the same move Biggs made on the ACA: call a program rife with abuse or fraud, then cut it, and let ordinary families take the hit. Meanwhile, the Joint Economic Committee found that around 344,000 Arizonans — including more than 206,000 on Medicaid — stood to lose their insurance from the health care cuts he supported, nearly 29,000 of them in Biggs' own congressional district.

A long pattern

Cutting health care isn't new for Biggs. He has called SNAP food aid a "highly abused welfare program," and he has spent years attacking the Affordable Care Act. And the doctors this week raised his record on abortion, too: Biggs has co-sponsored a national abortion ban multiple times — even after Arizona voters made abortion a constitutional right in 2024.

The through-line is simple. On Medicaid, on the ACA, on reproductive care, Andy Biggs has repeatedly voted to take health care away from the people of Arizona. Now he wants to run the state — and this time, there would be no governor's veto to stop him.

When the doctors who actually treat Arizonans are telling you a candidate is dangerous for their health, that's not politics. That's a warning.

Source

This post is based on reporting by Gloria Rebecca Gomez for the Arizona Mirror. Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy/Arizona Mirror.