With Obamacare Here to Stay, Some States Revive Medicaid Expansion
The failure of the Republican health care plan gave new energy to state-level efforts to expand Medicaid. We look at three states where that may happen — Kansas, Maine and Virginia.
Kansas state Sen. Barbara Bollier is a Republican who has been fighting for years to get her colleagues to agree to expand Medicaid.
For years she pushed against what she described as a "Tea Party-ish" Senate and a governor who wouldn't consider the issue. In return for her efforts, she was stripped of her committee assignments and sidelined.
But in last November's election, the makeup of the Kansas legislature moved decidedly to the center. And last week, the state's House and Senate both agreed to expand eligibility for Medicaid, the government health program for the poor, to about 150,000 more Kansans.
"This has been
