Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) signed legislation Monday to expand the state’s Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act.
The expansion is expected to expand health coverage to more than 300,000 Michiganders in its first year and nearly 500,000 eventually.
When the Supreme Court ruling came out that decided the Feds were offering too good, and therefore too coercive of a deal to expand Medicaid, I guessed that within six to eight months forty or so states would have either expanded Medicaid or been in the process to expand Medicaid. I figured states that had unified Democratic control would do so quickly for social justice reasons. I figured split states and states with non-batshit insane Republicans in leadership positions would pass expansion with a coalition of Democrats who were responding to their base and Republicans who could count to eleven with their shoes on.
I was wrong.
Michigan is what I expected to see in most Republican controlled state governments. Michigan did the math and figured they would lose a boat load of money and make major donors worse off (and by the way, half a million people) for a stupid ideological stand, so a coalition of Democrats and Republicans who could count to eleven passed a bill. And a governor with budget woes took the money.
The only downside of Michigan’s decision to take the money so late is that the Republican controlled legislature decided to delay the expansion until April 1 out of spite