Despite Uncertainty After Court Ruling, Medicaid Expansion Likely to Proceed

The three red states — Idaho, Nebraska and Utah — that bucked their own Republican legislatures last month and approved Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act are likely to proceed, despite Friday’s ruling by a federal judge in Texas that the entire federal health care law is unconstitutional. Even in Montana, where voters last month defeated an extension of the temporary Medicaid expansion approved in 2015, legislative leaders predict that lawmakers will make the expansion permanent, since it is politically unpopular to take coverage away from people once it has been extended.Voter-approved Medicaid expansion would extend health care benefits to 91,000 low-income people in Idaho, nearly 90,000 in Nebraska and 150,000 in Utah.