Blue Wave Recap: Medicaid Expansion Wins Big

The Blue Wave on November 6, 2018 included so much good news it was difficult to process it all.  Over the next few weeks, Smart Dissent will attempt to recap the progress we made together including well-publicized topics and less covered ones.

Our third post is that Medicaid won BIG with ballot initiatives passing in several states and new governors elected in other states who are in favor of it.

Three states voted Tuesday to expand their Medicaid programs, which will extend coverage to an estimated 325,000 low-income Americans.

Voters in Idaho, Nebraska, and Utah passed ballot initiatives that would commit their states to participating in the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid to all residents who make less than 133 percent of the poverty line.

Re-read the names of those states again.  Red states expanding Medicaid?

These new victories show that more conservative states are slowly warming up to this part of Obamacare. It also demonstrates that health law advocates have a new strategy for expanding coverage in states where the governor and state legislature are reticent to do so: taking their case straight to the voters.

Medicaid expansion, which is done through Obamacare, is popular even in conservative states where Republican politicians won't implement it. https://t.co/1UyWGPrpX4

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) November 7, 2018

In additon, Maine and Kansas will have Democratic Governors who can now implement Medicaid expansion already approved by their legislatures. 

Last year, Maine became the first state to approve Medicaid expansion by ballot initiative, though its Republican governor has stood firmly in the way of implementation.

Hard to overstate how strongly Medicaid won last night, mostly in red states
—3 states (ID, NE, UT) passed ballots to expand Medicaid
—2 states (ME, KS) elected governors likely to expand, too

Works out to about 500k people gaining coverage.https://t.co/bBBwvAy2IZ

— Sarah Kliff (@sarahkliff) November 7, 2018

More great news to come:

Organizers are now eying the next states they could target with a similar strategy.

The nonprofit Fairness Project worked with state activists in all four states that voted on Medicaid expansion this year and plans to continue the effort. People from the project are now eying six states where they believe they could put Medicaid on the ballot in the near future, but they have not yet released details.

Sources:

https://www.vox.com/2018/11/7/18055848/medicaid-expansion-idaho-nebraska-utah