With shouts of "Do your job!" hundreds of Idaho activists gathered at the state capitol in Boise Monday, warning their legislators that they can't do what the Utah legislature has done, ignoring the will of the voters and restricting the Medicaid expansion voters approved in November.
That's exactly what the Idaho legislature is contemplating, considering repealing the bill as passed by the people and putting forward a plan would do any or all of imposing work restrictions, copay requirements, and/or lifetime limits. In this case, it's about a dozen Republican lawmakers who want to stall the process. In Proposition 2, the legislature was instructed to have a proposal sent to the federal government for expansion within 90 days of passage—that is, by mid-February. They're not going to make that deadline, and in fact are coming up with a bunch of waivers to send to the Trump administration for approval to delay the process further.
Which is why activists descended on the capital Monday. "Our message today is simple: Fund Medicaid without restrictions," said Luke Mayville, one of the founders of Reclaim Idaho, the group that launched the Medicaid ballot initiative. He reminded legislators that not only did the people of Idaho organize county by county, legislative district by district, but they prevailed against very steep odds just to get the initiative on the ballot, since previous legislatures had made that process as burdensome as they could. It got on the ballot, and it was approved in a landslide with 61 percent of the vote.
"The legislature is floating restrictions like work requirements for us," Mayville said, "but they're not proposing restricting their own health care." It's bad policy, and "that's not what we voted for," he said. "They have one job: Fund the expansion we voted for."
Among the speakers at the rally Monday was Dr. Kenneth Krell of Idaho Falls, who noted that it was nearly three years to the day since he first testified to the Senate Health & Welfare Committee in favor of Medicaid expansion, and estimated that, in the three years lawmakers hadn’t taken action, 1,000 Idahoans had died unnecessarily for lack of health coverage. "It's been three more years. That means another 1,000 Idahoans have died," Krell said. "But we're about to put an end to that." He also talked about the huge administrative costs other states have brought on themselves by trying to impose work requirements. Based on what's happened in states such as Arkansas, he estimates that it would cost Idaho $7.4 million to implement the program with work requirements, and less than $1 million administratively to do a clean expansion.
Not all legislators want to thwart the people, however. Rep. Muffy Davis beat a Republican incumbent last November; she told the crowd, "We are here today to support, to speak out for the thousands of Idahoans living in the healthcare coverage gap. We are here for our friends, our neighbors, our families who are living with this daily fear."
"We call ourselves a civilized society, and yet thousands of our friends and family members live each day with this same fear," Davis said. "It is not right, and Idahoans have spoken loud and clear."