No Medicaid Expansion Deal as Utah's Legislative Session Ends

Doctors, hospitals and advocates for the poor had high hopes Utah would become the 28th state to expand Medicaid this legislative session — a move that would cover more than a quarter of the state’s 400,000 uninsured.

 
A legislative task force spent the better part of a year studying the issue. Utah Gov. Gary Herbert commissioned his own studies and had vowed to make a decision in January.
 
But his plan, a "block grant" option announced late in the session, failed to win over GOP leaders in the House and Senate who want more time to weigh their options.
 
"Irreversible decisions ought to be made with as much deliberation and as much information as you possibly can," House Majority Whip Greg Hughes, R-Draper, told The Salt Lake Tribune last week.
 
Herbert wants to use $258 million in federal expansion dollars to buy private coverage for the full expansion group — 111,000 Utahns with incomes below 138 percent of the federal poverty level, such as a single person earning less than $15,500.