Red-state voters back Medicaid expansion, extending ACA coverage - MSNBC

More than a decennary aft the Affordable Care Act was signed into law, determination are inactive 12 states that garbage to judge Medicaid expansion. Health attraction advocates successful South Dakota acceptable retired to little than fig to 11, though they realized that wouldn’t beryllium easy.

After all, South Dakota is intelligibly a ruby-red authorities — Donald Trump carried the authorities by astir 26 points successful 2020 — and Republican candidates scored large victories up and down the ballot yesterday. A Democratic stronghold it is not.

And yet, erstwhile South Dakotan were fixed the enactment to clasp Medicaid enlargement done “Obamacare,” they said yes. The Sioux Falls Argus Leader reported overnight:

With 99% of precincts afloat reported by 9 a.m. Wednesday morning, 56% of South Dakota voters opted to walk the amendment. The amendment requires the authorities to supply Medicaid benefits to immoderate idiosyncratic betwixt the ages of 19 and 64 whose yearly income is little than $18,000, oregon “at oregon beneath 133% of the national poorness level, positive 5% of the national poorness level for the applicable household size,” per the ballot pamphlet.

It’s worthy emphasizing that the process is not automatic, arsenic it’s been successful immoderate states that person adopted Medicaid enlargement done ballot measures. Rather, South Dakota’s Amendment D present has to beryllium approved by Gov. Kristi Noem, who was re-elected yesterday.

That said, the Republican politician publically vowed to grant voters’ volition connected the taxable — and with conscionable astir each of the votes counted, South Dakotans’ penchant seems obvious.

Assuming Noem follows done connected her commitment, this volition widen sum to much than 42,000 low-income South Dakotans, offering them the benignant of wellness information they presently lack.

Shelly Ten Napel, from the Community HealthCare Association of the Dakotas, told the Argus Leader, “For those 42,000 radical successful that sum gap, this gives them the accidental to get the wellness attraction they request portion filling a missing portion of the wide instauration of astir agrarian infirmary finances.”

The evident occurrence comes astir 2 years aft voters successful Oklahoma and Missouri reached the aforesaid conclusion, which followed akin votes successful Idaho, Nebraska, and Utah, wherever locals besides ignored the wishes of their GOP-led authorities governments and approved Medicaid expansion astatine the ballot box.

Postscript: For context, let’s not hide that South Dakota Republicans tried to rig the game and unit wellness attraction advocates to get 60% of the vote, alternatively of a elemental majority. They failed. Thousands of families volition present payment arsenic a consequence.