Nebraska state officials on Friday certified a petition to add a question on the November ballot on whether to expand Medicaid under Obamacare.
Nebraska became the third state where voters will decide whether to expand Medicaid in their locality for the first time, according to the advocacy group Fairness Project, which seeks to use state ballot measures to advance progressive policy reforms. Idaho and Utah are the other states that have ballot measures this fall to expand Medicaid for the first time.
“Voters from across the political spectrum are revolting against politicians who are standing in the way of an America where every family can see a doctor without going bankrupt,” said Jonathan Schleifer, executive director of the Fairness Project, which is helping the ballot campaigns in the states.
Montana already expanded Medicaid in 2016, but voters this fall will decide whether to keep the expansion via a question on the ballot.
So far, 31 states have expanded Medicaid under Obamacare.
Activists are turning to ballot measures as a way to advance expansion in states where the legislature or governor has blocked it.
A majority of voters in Maine voted last fall to expand Medicaid as part of a ballot initiative. However, the state’s Republican governor, Paul LePage, has blocked implementing the expansion on the grounds that it would wreck the state’s finances.
The state’s Supreme Court ruled earlier this week LePage had to start implementing the expansion while a legal fight over the ballot measure continues.
