Nebraska Rejects Compromise Effort to Expand Medicaid

Nebraska legislators spent the past year crafting a conservative version of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion that they hoped would gain support in a pretty red state. But after a failed vote in the state legislature Wednesday, the Medicaid expansion is officially dead in Nebraska this year.

So far, 25 states and Washington, DC.., have expanded their Medicaid programs in 2014, the first year of Obamacare coverage. With some exceptions, these are mostly blue states that joined the expansion, which was made optional by the Supreme Court’s 2012 decision on the health care law.

For this year and the following two years, the federal government is fully funding the expansion population for states that opt into the program. States can join at any time, but the 100 percent federal match starts going down after 2016, though it won’t drop below 90 percent.

Read the full story here: http://wapo.st/1gKeayh

Source: The Washington Post