South Dakota Governor on Medicaid Expansion – “Promising,” but “not a done deal”

Governor Dennis Daugaard lays out the case for Medicaid expansion in his FY17 Budget Address on December 8, 2015. While saying the discussions around expansion in his state are “promising,” Daugaard cautions that it is “not a done deal” and still requires both Native American tribal approval as well as approval by the South Dakota legislature and the federal government. However, he ends his explanation by saying “I believe we should seize the opportunity if we can make it work.”

While his case for considering expansion is mostly non-ideological and based in solid policy and fiscal considerations, there is one line in his speech where he tries to rewrite history (at minute 9.45 below):

We have to remember that federal health care reform has created the absurd scenario in which a person at 101% of poverty can get highly subsided insurance on the exchange, but a person at 99% of poverty can’t.

It wasn’t federal health reform that created this situation – after the Supreme Court invalidated the requirement in the Affordable Care Act that all states expand Medicaid, it was each state’s decision as to whether or not avoid this “absurd scenario” by expanding Medicaid.  And for the past two years Daugaard could have avoided this “absurd scenario” without the state paying a dime.

This excerpt is from Daugaard’s full speech available here from South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

Adam Searing is an Associate Professor at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy’s Center for Children and Families.

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