It was not a good day for backers of Medicaid expansion, as the proposal suffered setbacks on both sides of the Missouri Capitol on Wednesday. First, the Senate Appropriations Committee rejected a bill that would have expanded Medicaid in Missouri while promising to reverse course if the federal government failed to deliver promised funding. Then the House Budget Committee rejected two attempts to add Medicaid expansion to the state budget. Republican Rick Stream of St. Louis County chairs the committee.
“We don’t like to expand government for the most part," says Stream. "There’s a worry about what the federal government has promised, verses what it will deliver…they say for the first three years, a hundred percent – who’s to say it’s gonna be a hundred percent next year?”
Democrats, meanwhile, may try again to expand Medicaid when the state budget is debated on the House floor in two weeks.