Today and over the holiday weekend in states that have so far refused the federal money available for expanding Medicaid, news outlets continue to editorialize in favor of expansion.

In Pennsylvania, The Scranton Times-Tribune decried the decision by the Governor and legislature to go home without either passing a budget or expanding Medicaid to 300,000 residents. In Pennsylvania, the influx of money from the expansion is seen as one way to fill a state budget deficit.

In Indiana, the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette’s editorial writers urge that “it’s time to stop arguing” and simply expand Medicaid.

And while the editorial writers at Oklahoma’s Tulsa World are “not in love with ‘Obamacare’”, they urged Oklahoma’s Governor Fallin today to expand Medicaid through the state-run program as soon as possible because “[t]he state’s refusal to accept the funding weakens our workforce, hamstrings our economy and puts the health-care system at risk for everyone”.

And even USA Today’s editorial board argued yesterday especially strongly in favor of Medicaid expansion: “What a bargain, at least for states whose leaders cared that hundreds of thousands of their neediest residents had no health care other than what they could patch together at clinics or high-cost hospital emergency rooms.”

In some ways, Medicaid expansion is just one more political football as states move through the budget process and towards this year’s elections.  Despite the politics though I continue to be amazed at the staying power this issue – health care for the lowest income workers in our country – has in the media and public conversation.  As this past weekend’s editorials illustrate, there continues to be consistently strong editorial and public support for expanding Medicaid despite the raging political debate. In Utah, for example, a recent poll showed over 70% support for expansion in a very conservative state.

Usually serious proposals to extend health care for poor people are relegated to a small flurry of news coverage and public discussion and then fade slowly into obscurity. Not so Medicaid expansion. Two factors are at play here.

First, Medicaid expansion is a real, funded option that states can take advantage of immediately – more than half of states have already done so. This creates continuing pressure on states that haven’t acted to show why they can’t accomplish what their neighbors are doing.

Second, despite all the court cases and ongoing debate regarding the Affordable Care Act, the passage of the law in 2010 and the subsequent implementation and media coverage over the last four years have slowly but surely changed the expectations we have on health care for everyone.  We are finally becoming a country where it is no longer acceptable to seriously advocate that substantial numbers of our fellow Americans would be just fine living without the safety net of health coverage. I know we aren’t completely there yet – after all, last week I was writing about the “Medicaid leads to poor health” myth still perpetrated by some politicians and commentators – but it is nevertheless unusual to see editorial writers at most major state newspapers and other news outlets take and keep on taking a position that their reluctant state should expand coverage. The health law has clearly given us a vision of the future where people don’t have to worry about losing their health care coverage and most Americans across the political spectrum are reluctant to let that dream go.