Will Red States Vote To Expand Medicaid?
Medicaid is on the ballot in four states today. In Idaho, Nebraska and Utah, voters will decide whether to expand Medicaid for the first time under the Affordable Care Act. (States can choose to extend the program to cover more low-income people, and 17 states — all of which have a Republican governor, legislature or both — have chosen not to.) Montanans are deciding whether to make their 2015 expansion permanent.
Medicaid expansion has always been one of the more popular parts of the Affordable Care Act; even in states that haven’t expanded, a majority of residents, 56 percent, say they’d like the program to cover more people (though, as with most topics, there are partisan divides). All four ballot initiatives are polling well. In Montana, where a tobacco tax would pay for the expansion, the tobacco industry has spent millions fighting the initiative in the last few weeks, which has the potential to tip the already close vote there.
This isn’t the first time Medicaid has been on the ballot — Mainers voted to expand the program using a ballot initiative in 2017 (though Governor Paul LePage has essentially refused to implement it). Despite the potential for legislators to stand in the way, activists have told me they increasingly see these ballot initiatives as a way to pass popular progressive laws in red states.