States and Medicaid Expansion

Posted on February 21, 2013 by admin

• Florida Gov. Rick Scott supports Medicaid expansion, By Tia Mitchell and Steve Bousquet, February 21, 2013, Miami Herald: “Gov. Rick Scott said Wednesday he supports expanding Medicaid and funneling billions of federal dollars to Florida, a significant policy reversal that could bring health care coverage to 1 million additional Floridians. ‘While the federal government is committed to pay 100 percent of the cost, I cannot, in good conscience, deny Floridians the needed access to health care,’ Scott said at a hastily called news conference at the Governor’s Mansion. Scott, a former hospital executive, spoke with unusual directness about helping the ‘poorest and weakest’ Floridians — a stunning about-face for a small-government Republican who was one of the loudest voices in an aggressive, and ultimately unsuccessful, legal strategy to kill a law he derided as ‘Obamacare…'”
• McDonnell urges no Medicaid expansion, By Laura Vozzella, February 21, 2013, Washington Post: “Gov. Robert F. McDonnell is urging state budget negotiators not to open the door to Medicaid expansion until reforms to the federal program have been approved and implemented. In a letter to the heads of the Senate Finance and House Appropriations committees, McDonnell (R) said Medicaid spending, which has grown 1,600 percent in Virginia in the past 30 years, presents a huge burden to the state even without expansion…”