Voters In 4 Red States Could Give Health Care To 400,000 On Election Day
Voters in four states that heavily supported President Donald Trump in 2016 have a chance this Election Day to secure health coverage for nearly 400,000 low-income working people.
Organizers in Idaho, Nebraska and Utah successfully gathered enough signatures for petitions to put ballot initiatives in front of voters this year that would expand Medicaid eligibility to include anyone earning up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, which is about $16,000 a year for a single person and $34,000 for a family of four. Voters in Montana, which adopted Medicaid expansion in 2015, will be able to decide whether to extend the benefit, which is set to expire in the state on July 1.
Residents of these four states have an opportunity to send a signal to Republican officeholders that voters want more health care for their neighbors, at a time when the Trump administration and GOP state officials are hard at work scaling back the reach of the Affordable Care Act and making Medicaid benefits harder to get and keep.
It’s no coincidence that all four states are deeply conservative, because it’s conservative Republican elected officials who have resisted the expansion most strenuously. A similar dynamic is afoot in three other states — Florida, Georgia and Wisconsin — where Democratic gubernatorial candidates have made Medicaid expansion a central part of their platforms ― and have real chances to win.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/idaho-montana-nebraska-utah-medicaid-expansion-ballot-measures_us_5bcf9f7ee4b0d38b587d8036
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