Obamacare Ruling Prompts New Medicaid Push in Virginia

Soon after the Supreme Court salvaged a key part of the nation’s Affordable Care Act on Thursday, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe was rallying the troops in the state capital to expand Medicaid under the law.

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • Email
  • linkText
Soon after the Supreme Court salvaged a key part of the nation’s Affordable Care Act on Thursday, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe was rallying the troops in the state capital to expand Medicaid under the law.

 

“[N]ow is the time to drop cynical efforts to prevent families from accessing care that will make their lives better,” McAuliffe said in a written statement. “With this issue decided, I hope we can now put partisan politics aside and . . . close the coverage gap.”

 

McAuliffe (D) led a pitched and ultimately unsuccessful battle to add 400,000 uninsured Virginians to the Medicaid rolls during his first year in office, taking the state to the brink of a government shutdown in an attempt to expand coverage for the poor under the new federal law.

 

In the aftermath, the governor shifted his focus to the bipartisan cause of economic development, got so chummy with Republicans that he worried some Democrats, and said expansion had always been a lost cause.

 

“You know as well as I did, they were never going to pass it,” he said in an interview in January as his freshman year wound up. “But golly, I got to try.”

 

But suddenly Thursday, the governor who lately has been all about the“new Virginia economy” was dusting off the catchphrase that dominated his first year in office: “close the coverage gap.”

 

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • Email
  • linkText
Caroline Cournoyer is GOVERNING's senior web editor.
Special Projects