No End In Sight For Medicaid Issue
UPDATE: SALT LAKE CITY, March 12, 2015 (Gephardt Daily) – The Healthy Utah Plan was rejected in the House today. Gephardt Daily will be live streaming a press conference from Governor Herbert at 2:00 p.m.
SALT LAKE CITY, March 12, 2015 (Gephardt Daily) -The Utah legislative session ends tonight at midnight, and the chances of reaching a decision on the Medicaid problem is looking less and less likely.
Governor Gary Herbert’s Healthy Utah Plan was gaining strong momentum going into the session, and easily made it past the Senate, but hit a major snag when House Speaker Greg Hughes (R-District 51) refused to bring the bill to a committee hearing. Eventually, possibly due to public pressure, the bill was heard at the March 5 meeting of the House Business and Labor Committee, where it was defeated in a 9-4 vote.
Instead, the committee chose House Majority Leader Jim Dunnigan’s plan, dubbed “Utah Cares.” The house plan would only cover up to 100% of the coverage gap, and would give 60% of those cover by expanding traditional Medicaid through state funding, and offering the remaining 40% assistance through Utah’s Primary Care Network (PCN), which covers primary care and offers limited emergency room and prescription drug coverage, but no specialty, mental or behavioral health care. On March 6, a substitute motion by Rep. Edward Redd added some mental health coverage to the Utah Cares bill. Utah Cares was passed by the body of the House of Representatives, but this has left the House and Senate at an impasse.
RyLee Curtis, the Senior Health Policy Analyst at the Utah Health Policy Project, told Gephardt Daily that for them, the objective going into the session was clear.
“When we started the 2015 legislative session, we had the Governor on board, and we thought with that backing that would be enough to push this legislation through,” said Curtis. “And along with that, we shortly had the Senate, so our ultimate goal of course was to pass the healthy utah plan and get health insurance coverage for thousands of Utahns and bringing our tax dollars home.”
Stacy K. Stanford was in car accident in 2010 that left her with a neurological disorder and unable to seek health care, or even a proper diagnosis.
‘I ran an Alzheimers care center. My career as a care giver was a very intense job,” she explains. Since losing her employment and her insurance, Stanford has gone back to school to study for a new career, and has become an outspoken activist on the subject of health care and Medicaid expansion, but still has not been able to qualify for insurance under Utah law.
“It’s mostly been frustrating and disheartening, ” she said in regards to the 2015 legislative session. “It just seems a little frustrating that healthy Utah is the product of a compromise of the last two sessions, and comprises between the Governor and the Democrats and the Republicans, however it just never seems like the left can give enough. The conservative are demanding much more of a compromise.”
Stanford wants to make it very clear why this situation exists in the first place.
“It’s not due to a fault in the affordable care act,” she stated. “The Republicans try to say that, but it’s just not true. The Affordable Care Act was written to cover everyone. However, when the Supreme Court received the challenge as to the legality of the ACA, they decided to uphold the individual mandate. But at that same time, they ruled that the medicaid expansion needed to be an optional state by state decision.”
When asked what her hopes are for the future, stanford said “I’m knew to the whole political process. so I’m still an optimist, they haven’t broken me yet. I am still hopeful that we can work something out. I think that healthy Utah for two years and then Utah cares is an appropriate compromise. I think there are other ways we could go go about it, but that’s just the one that’s been on the table. But at this point their just flat out doing nothing. We can do a lot better than Utath Cares, but at least do something.”
Despite the House’s initial refusal to even bring the bill to a vote, and the later rejection of said bill in a vote of, Curtis told us that the mood at the Utah Health Policy Project remains hopeful.
“We’re still hopeful. Last year we finally got the Governor on board, this year we got the Senate on board. So maybe next year we can convince the house. If not sooner.”
“So, you know, the session’s not over till midnight tonight, so there’s till a possibility that a compromise is worked out. And we’ve heard a lot about the possibility of a special legislative session. And there’s other opportunities being discussed that can put pressure on the legislators to pass this.”
Curtis just hopes that the House will come around.
“We have the Governor, we have the Senate, the public supports this,” she said. “The House of Representatives is our obstacle.
