States and Medicaid Expansion

Posted on January 15, 2016 by admin

• Obama seeks to boost financial assistance for states’ Medicaid expansion, By Louise Radnofsky, January 14, 2016, Wall Street Journal: “The Obama administration is proposing to extend a financial sweetener the federal government offers states that expand their Medicaid programs, in a bid to persuade more to do so before the president leaves office. White House officials said President Barack Obama will ask Congress to include three years of full federal funding of expansion for any state that extends eligibility for the program to most low-income residents. Officials said the proposal will be made in Mr. Obama’s fiscal 2017 budget, to be released Feb. 9…”
• Bevin’s Medicaid testing ground lies in E. Ky., By Laura Ungar and Chris Kenning, January 14, 2016, Louisville Courier-Journal: “These hardscrabble Appalachian hills so rife with need and illness have been a national testing ground for Obamacare over the past two years, but they may soon test something more fundamental – the age-old struggle to balance personal responsibility with the obligation to care for the poor. The Affordable Care Act gave thousands of residents in Eastern Kentucky, one of the nation’s most vulnerable communities, unprecedented new access to health care – mostly through expansion of taxpayer-funded Medicaid, helping make Kentucky a national model.  But it also raised fears about yet another burden on a fragile state budget and skepticism among conservatives who saw it as out of step with their political ideology…”
• Louisiana’s new governor signs an order to expand Medicaid, By Richard Fausset and Abby Goodnough, January 12, 2016, New York Times: “On Tuesday, his second day in office, Gov. John Bel Edwards signed an executive order expanding Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act, fulfilling a campaign promise that will expand health coverage to hundreds of thousands of people in one of the nation’s poorest states…”
• Why is Louisiana’s Medicaid expansion so important?, By Christina Beck, January 14, 2016, Christian Science Monitor: “Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards recently signed controversial Medicaid expansion legislation into law. President Obama visited Louisiana on Thursday in hopes that Medicaid’s success there will spur other conservative states to consider the plan.  Governor Edwards (D) signed Medicaid expansion legislation on Tuesday, his first day in office. He has long been a proponent of the Medicare expansion, which he believes will help Louisiana counter its wellness woes…”