Maine just resoundingly became the first state to expand Medicaid by ballot initiative [View all]

[pnwmom]

Source: WA Post

Less than two months after Republicans' latest effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act imploded, a purple state just made a decidedly blue-state move to essentially expand Obamacare.

On Tuesday, Maine became the first state to expand Medicaid with a ballot initiative. And it passed overwhelmingly: Maine voters agreed to grant health care to an estimated 70,000 low-income residents by a nearly 20-percentage point margin by the time the measure was called by election watchers. In other words, a sizable number of voters in Maine just voted to do the exact opposite of what the state's Republican governor and Republicans in Washington have been trying to do.

Maine Gov. Paul LePage vetoed a bipartisan legislative deal to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act at least five times. Since Republicans took control of Washington in January, they've spent more than half the year trying to repeal Obamacare with proposals that would have drastically cut Medicaid. But Maine's Sen. Susan Collins (R) was one of the defining “no” votes that ultimately ended the GOP efforts, saying the plans would pull the rug out from too many in her state.

What happened in Maine could provide momentum for progressives to get voters in other states to expand Medicaid, such as Alaska and Idaho, where groups have already started similar Medicaid expansion ballot initiatives next year


Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/11/07/maine-could-become-the-first-state-to-expand-medicaid-by-ballot-initiative/?utm_term=.f36584d8dc6c