Utah: Another GOP domino falls: Gov. Herbert agrees to expand Medicaid

Hat Tip To: 
Britt M.

Of course it would've been even more "win, win, win all around" if they'd just done this 9 months ago, but I'll take it...

The Obama administration has agreed in concept to Utah’s novel alternative to expanding Medicaid, including the notion that able-bodied people who get insurance subsidies should accept the state’s help with finding work, Gov. Gary Herbert said late Tuesday.

The governor said after a meeting with Sylvia Burwell, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, that a final agreement is two or three weeks away.

HHS did not agree that insurance subsidies would be contingent on recipients holding a job or looking for work, but the agency did agree that employment can be a goal of Utah’s program, Healthy Utah.

"It’s a win, win, win all the way around," the governor said, describing the negotiations as resulting in federal approval of 95 percent of his Healthy Utah plan.

The estimate of how many Utahns would be eligible ranges from 54K - 75K; I have it down as 61K, right in the middle.

UPDATE: As noted in the comments, if Utah does follow through with this plan along with Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Maine, Indiana and Wyoming (all of which are in various stages of "considering" Medicaid expansion in one form or another), that would bring the total number of states which do so up to 32.

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