In seventeen hours, Virginia will start accepting enrollment for their new Medicaid expansion. Coverage goes live on January 1, 2019.
Virginia will start accepting applications for Medicaid this Thursday. It’s a big day for the nearly 400,000 Virginians who will qualify for Medicaid coverage. 1/
— Joan Alker (@JoanAlker1) October 29, 2018
Virginia is expanding Medicaid because of a massive electoral victory of a coalition that highly values Medicaid expansion. Enough Virginia Republicans were willing to cross their party lines to join with unanimous Democratic support to make sure far more Virginians can get affordable healthcare last spring.
Next week Idaho is voting on a referendum as to whether or not the state wants to expand Medicaid:
Wow GOP governor Butch Otter endorses Medicaid expansion in Idaho and appears in an ad for it. https://t.co/4zb3QxGExp
Expansion is on the ballot there next week
— Peter Sullivan (@PeterSullivan4) October 30, 2018
Next week, Maine is voting for a new governor. They have already approved Medicaid expansion but their current governor is doing everything he can to block implementing a clear directive to expand Medicaid.
If you want to see Medicaid expanded, voting for candidates who, when they win, want to expand Medicaid is the best way of doing that.
Remember this on Tuesday.
On the Road and In Your Backyard
rikyrah
Congratulations to my fellow citizens of Virginia ???
randy khan
Elections matter. Who knew?
The results in the downballot House of Delegates election were the key. Before the 2017 elections, it was a 67-33 Republican edge. After, it was 51-49 (and could have been 50-50 with a lucky coin toss).
oldster
I realize that this blog and its denizens are strictly and scrupulously non-partisan, but still:
“If you want to see Medicaid expanded, voting for
candidates who, when they win, want to expand MedicaidDEMOCRATS is the best way of doing that.”Honus
@rikyrah: didn’t know you were a Virginian, Riky! Come out to Free Union some time (we have those “FU” stickers on our cars)
I’ve been telling people that Virginia is not purple, it’s s blue state now. Obama carried it handily twice. (In 2008 he was the first democrat to carry Virginia since LBJ in ‘64) and Hillary won here in 2016. A republican hasn’t won a statewide race since 2009. It’s a tribute to the 2010 gerrymandering that the general assembly and has been republican but that changed drastically last November. Transgender woman Danica Roem ousted 27 year house of delegates member “Bathroom bill” Bob Marshall. If we can flip the statehouse, which looks likely, we can undo the 2010 gerrymandering and probably flip our or five congressional seat next time. It’s ridiculous that a state that has a clear majority of democrats had an 11-2 congressional delegation for seven years.
EriktheRed
Seems to me you’re preaching to the choir here, David.
randy khan
@Honus:
I think we can flip some of those seats this year.
Kraux Pas
As a gay man, I feel compelled every time I see it to point out how much I love the name Butch Otter.
Seanly
Butch “Is it obvious I wear ill-fitting dentures” Otter and his wife appearing for the ad makes my wife afraid that there must be some poison pill or super-reverse stunt that makes it bad. I tell her to just still vote for it – we’re hoping to get federal money while we can.
Honus
@randy khan: I’m hoping we can flip the fifth district. Garrett retired “to spend more time with his family” (alcoholism). Lesli Cockburn has a shot, not unlike tom Perriello who beat Virgil Goode in the 2006 wave.
I’d really love to flip the seventh and get rid of the odious Dave brat.
Elizabelle
@Honus: Working on it, working on it, working on it, re Dave Brat.
Go Abigail! And healthcare (and education) are our top issues at the doors.
Timurid
TICK TOCK.
p.a.
Sure wish this could be done without me-too-ist Rethugs, but glad so many people will benefit.
Redshift
Yeah! Next year in Virginia we need to get a majority in both houses and eliminate the asinine “work retirement” that had to be included to get a few Republicans on board.
Redshift
@Honus: Virginia is a blue state but for gerrymandering. We pick up one seat in each house next year, and Democrats have the trifecta for the next redistricting. I just hope we can keep enough of this wave going.
Barbara
@Seanly: Idaho has more people covered through the federal exchange than any other non-Medicaid expansion state except Texas and Florida. The percentage of the population that has unmet health needs who would be eligible for Medicaid expansion is high. It’s a travesty that it has not expanded before now. There was a good but infuriating article on this subject nearly two years ago in the Washington Post. Suggested solutions from the cracker jack members of Idaho’s legislative body included praying, getting non-profits to give more charity and, my personal favorite, for people to just get the kind of jobs that offer insurance. Wow, I wonder why more people in Idaho hadn’t thought of that before!
And for Virginia — I think most of us were caught off guard by how deep the blue wave penetrated into local elections. Bob Marshall hadn’t even had an opponent in some prior cycles. But the truth is, the outer suburbs of Northern Virginia are where demographics have been changing the fastest and many voters just hadn’t focused on how retrograde he really was. I would give a lot for this Tuesday to be similar to Election Day last year.
L85NJGT
@randy khan:
2018: The most Democratic Party state lege candidates since 1982.
Mai Naem mobile
@Kraux Pas: Butch Beaver would have covered more bases.
burnspbesq
@Kraux Pas:
Shame he doesn’t love you back.
Chyron HR
If only the Democratic Socialists of America had managed to stop Ralph Northam last November, the people of Virginia wouldn’t be subjected to this unconscionable expansion of the neoliberal status quo.
L85NJGT
@Chyron HR:
Whatever happens on Tuesday, it will clearly be the fault of Obama, Hillary and the DNC.
Kraux Pas
@burnspbesq: Oh, it’s only the name I find appealing. He’s a Republican. Ew.
FlipYrWhig
@Chyron HR: I was briefly a member of a Facebook group about Virginia politics but decided I had to quit it because of the numbers of people who were still upset with Northam’s various perfidious neoliberal deeds, like saying a thing about a group that did a thing that related in some way to fracking or whatever the fuck it was.
Bostonian
Dafuq, there is seriously a guy named Butch Otter and he is Governor of Idaho? Dat some cartoon name. Did he replace Suave Grizzly?