Health Care, Medicaid | featured news

Come January, millions of low-income adults will gain health insurance coverage through Medicaid in one of the farthest-reaching provisions of the Obama health care law.

Rejecting the Medicaid expansion in the federal health care law could have unexpected consequences for states where Republican lawmakers remain steadfastly opposed to what they scorn as "Obamacare."

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam announced Wednesday that he won't pursue expanding the state's Medicaid program to help cover the uninsured as part of the federal Affordable Care Act.

A Florida Senate committee voted Monday against expanding Medicaid to roughly 1 million of the state's poorest under the federal health overhaul and instead proposed a voucher plan that would require patients to pay premiums and co-pays.

Florida governor Rick Scott created a stir this week when he said he’d expand Medicaid as requested by the Obama administration. But health policy experts say it's hard for any governor to say no to billions of dollars in federal subsidies.

Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, a leading Republican critic of President Obama’s health care law, said he now supported a three-year expansion of Medicaid to cover more poor people.

Mich. governor Rick Snyder, opposing his own party, welcomes an "Obamacare" option... A day before he delivers his budget message to the state Legislature, Gov. Rick Snyder said Wednesday he will support an expansion of Medicaid in Michigan.

A Republican governor has decided that the federal government's plan for expanding Medicaid is in his state's best interests. Medicaid coverage will be expanded to nearly 600,000 low-income Ohioans now left out of the program as part of the state's two-year budget Gov. John R. Kasich proposed Monday.

Keith Foreman, like a growing number of disabled Americans on Medicaid, qualified for a personal caregiver to help him with daily activities such as dressing, shaving and preparing meals. Foreman, 57, who has a spinal injury, hired his girlfriend, Sheila McDonald. In 2011, McDonald received almost $5,000 from Medicaid for six months of care she provided to Foreman.

...So Massachusetts used not just federal Medicaid money but federal dollars above and beyond that Medicaid money to finance their health reforms. It is difficult to see how Romney’s proposal to cut Medicaid spending and hand that reduced share over to the states would allow other states to follow Massachusetts’ example. It might not even permit Massachusetts to continue following Massachusetts’ example.