This Week: Republicans Aren’t Talking About Obamacare Anymore; Red States Push to Expand Medicaid
Conservative-leaning states have for months been exploring ways to add work requirements to Medicaid; now, President Trump is pushing for something similar on the national level. Last Tuesday, he signed a surprise executive order requiring federal agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), to investigate how to force recipients of federal social safety net programs, including Medicaid, to prove they’re gainfully employed.
HHS also moved to undermine Obamacare last week by releasing a new rule that would allow counties with only one insurer in Obamacare marketplaces to qualify as “exempt” from the individual mandate in 2018. Because of last December’s GOP tax law, the individual mandate will be gone nationwide in 2019. But this new rule, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, would bump that date up a year for people in hundreds of counties. The rule would also allow Americans whose only marketplace health plan options cover abortion to receive an exception, penalizing states like New York and California that mandate abortion coverage for all marketplace plans.
As the administration works to undermine Obamacare, blue states are continuing to work to shore up the program. New Jersey’s legislature sent Governor Phil Murphy (D) legislation that imposes a state-wide individual mandate to replace the federal mandate that will disappear next year. Those New Jersey residents who don’t buy insurance would pay a fine which would feed a “Health Insurance Premium Security Fund” that will help pay claims for the very ill and keep rates for the rest of the population from rising.
Other states — including some red states — are putting Medicaid expansion on next November’s ballot. Utah looks likely to become the latest state to do so after organizers in the state submitted 165,000 signatures on Monday, more than 50,000 more than were needed to put an initiative on the ballot. Similar campaigns are underway in Idaho and Nebraska. Idaho has a April 30 deadline for organizers to collect the 56,000 signatures the state requires to put a measure on the ballot. Organizers in Nebraska have until July 6 to collect 85,000 signatures.
Maine voted overwhelmingly last November to expand Medicaid, but Governor Paul LePage denounced the move as “fiscally irresponsible” and refused to submit a plan to fund the program by the deadline to do so, April 3. Now, Maine’s Democratic Speaker of the House tells PBS that even if LePage refuses to cooperate, the state’s existing Medicaid funding is enough to pay for the expansion to go into effect, as scheduled, on July 2.
As Republicans throw themselves into their fight to hold onto Congress in the 2018 midterms, The Washington Post observes that few are mentioning Obamacare, which, despite the end of the individual mandate, remains largely intact and the law of the land. That means that for the first time in nearly a decade, Republicans are not running on the issue that played a key role in the formation of the Tea Party and helped buoy many conservative candidates in the 2010 elections.