Activists backing state ballot measures to expand Medicaid expressed confidence Thursday their state legislatures will implement the expansions if voters pass the measures, avoiding what happened in Maine, where the governor has fought implementation.
Voters will go to the polls next week in three states to expand Medicaid for the first time — Utah, Nebraska, and Idaho — and Montana voters will decide whether to reauthorize the state’s expansion. Medicaid expansion proponents have turned to ballot measures in traditionally red states, but Maine offers a cautionary tale that the fight doesn’t end after the votes are cast.
Maine voters approved a ballot measure in 2017 to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, but Republican Gov. Paul LePage refused to implement it. The decision has led to a bitter legal battle in which a state court has called for LePage, who will leave the governor’s mansion due to term limits next year, to sign people up for Medicaid.
Now, supporters in the states deciding expansion next week hope to avoid the same fight.
“The sentiment has been among legislators and the governor that it is the will of people,” said RyLee Curtis, campaign manager of the pro-expansion group Utah Decides.
Curtis said that Utah should have a smoother path to getting an expansion implemented than Maine because the ballot measure includes a funding mechanism: A higher tax on non-food items in grocery stores.
Curtis and other expansion organizers spoke with reporters during a Thursday call organized by the Fairness Project, a group that worked to add the expansion questions on the ballots.
But neither Nebraska nor Idaho included measures for funding, meaning their state legislatures will have to enact revenue provisions.
John McCollister, a member of Nebraska’s state legislature, said that legislators he has talked to are open to funding.
“Funding Medicaid expansion in Nebraska is likely to move forward if we have a successful vote,” he said on the call.
The state’s governor, Republican Pete Ricketts, opposes expansion but has said he will not campaign against the measure. His Democratic opponent in the general election next week, state legislator Bob Krist, has said he supports the expansion.
Idaho’s ballot measure also got a boost earlier this week when Republican Gov. Butch Otter said he supports expansion.
The governor’s support “sends a strong message on where Republican leadership is when voters have a chance to weigh in on this issue,” said Jenenne Newbre, an Idaho resident with pre-existing conditions who supports the ballot measure on the call.
Fairness Project’s Executive Director Jonathan Schleifer didn’t say whether Montana’s legislature will support the re-expansion, although Montana does have a controversial method to fund it: A $2 dollar-a-pack tax on cigarettes and a 33 percent tax on other products like e-cigarettes.
He said that the state is fighting a $17.5 million effort from the tobacco industry to stop the measure.
“It is like David and Goliath, where Goliath also gave people cancer,” Schleifer said.
