Dive Brief:
- Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley floated a test balloon last week to expand Medicaid in the state after stating consistently throughout his re-election campaign that he opposed such a move.
- In a meeting with primarily freshmen lawmakers, Gov. Bentley said he might be open to receiving a block Medicaid grant from the federal government to expand Medicaid in his state. This is an option he did not consider before re-election, and it follows in the footsteps of other conservative Republican governors from Indiana and Ohio who have flip-flopped on the issue in the face of major healthcare crises in their states.
- One caveat Gov. Bentley mentioned in conjunction with accepting a block grant is that it would have to be tied to applicants either having jobs, or actively seeking jobs.
Dive Insight:
Elected officials are starting to understand the danger of playing politics with healthcare in the age of the ACA.
For years conservative opponents to the ACA have predicted everything from the introduction of the fictional "death panels" to the irrevocable collapse of the healthcare industry. They've used "Obamacare" as their pejorative term for a program that, while seeming to fail at reducing the number of uninsured in the US, has not resulted in the gloom and doom predictions touted by people trying to win elections. And now all the political posturing is starting to come back and bite them where they sit.
The simple truth is that healthcare is a dangerous political football, because it's an issue that affects every American's life, regardless of their political viewpoints. The flu doesn't care about someone's personal interpretation of the Constitution. The real political reality is that no one wants to be governor of a state where people are suffering because they can't afford to see a doctor— leaving hospitals to perform financially-untenable levels of charity care.
Want to read more? You may want to read this story about how one hospital is surviving in a state without Medicaid expansion.
