S.D. GOP legislators reject Medicaid expansion. The naysayers are heartless, irrational and

S.D. GOP legislators reject Medicaid expansion. The naysayers are heartless, irrational and impervious to facts.


Looks like it’s up to us voters to show that South Dakota has a brain. As you can see above, we’ll soon get our chance at the polls now that our Legislature has rejected Medicaid expansion.

Based on what’s happening in so many other red states (Nevada, Utah, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and Indiana come quickly to mind) in the country after expanding Medicaid eligibility, you’d think South Dakota’s elected leadership, heavily dominated by Republicans, would get a clue and figure out that expansion might actually be a pretty good deal.

Just to throw some numbers (from healthinsurance.org) into the conversation, expanding Medicaid would bring 45,000 South Dakotans into the state’s pool of covered residents and would account for $348 million of federal money coming into the state every year to cover the federal share of the burden. That represents 90% of the cost of expansion, so South Dakota would have to come up with close to $35 million to put this program into place. We would never have to pay more than 10% of the cost of expanding Medicaid.

Why our GOP reps don’t get that this is a very good deal is hard to understand in the context of so many of their Republican counterparts in other states who have embraced it. Then Gov. Mike Pence enthusiastically supported Medicaid expansion when he brought it to Indiana (in a system that includes income-based premiums by participants) in 2015. Said Pence at the time, "We have worked hard to ensure that low-income Hoosiers have access to a health care plan that empowers them to take charge of their health and prepares them to move to private insurance as they improve their lives." Prior to expansion, Indiana’s uninsured rate was 14%. By 2019 (the latest figures I could find) the rate fell to 8.7%. Of the 350,000 hoosiers that qualified under Pence’s plan, more than 40% were covered 5 years later.

Read more: https://www.sdstandardnow.com/home/sd-gop-leaders-in-pierre-reject-medicaid-expansion-again-continuing-to-demonstrate-the-stubbornness-of-their-irrationality-and-ignorance-its-now-up-to-us-people