GLOBE, Ariz. — Like many residents of this copper-mining town in the mountains east of Phoenix, Debbie Cox knows plenty of people on Medicaid.

Cox, who is a property manager at a real estate company in Globe, has tenants who rely on the safety-net program. And at the domestic violence shelter where she volunteers as president of the board, Cox said, staff always look to enroll women and their children if they can.

But Cox, who is 65, has mixed feelings about Medicaid. “It’s not that I don’t see the need for it. I see the need for it literally on a weekly basis,” she said. “I also see a need for revamping it significantly because it’s been taken advantage of for so long.”

It wasn’t hard to find people in Globe like Cox with complicated views about Medicaid.

Gila County, where Globe is l

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