Idaho Republicans are looking into several proposals aimed at hobbling a successful ballot initiative to expand Medicaid in the state, joining a growing list of red states trying to limit health care coverage against the will of voters.
Republican lawmakers have considered plans to apply work requirements, co-pays, and lifetime limits. They also plan to ask the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to grant the waivers before the ballot initiative goes into effect on Jan....
ThinkProgress
Utah Senate passes bill limiting Medicaid expansion in favor of costly alternative
The Utah Senate voted Monday to partially repeal a ballot measure that would have expanded Medicaid to nearly 150,000 low-income residents in the state, weeks after voters overwhelmingly cast their ballots in favor of the initiative.
The legislation now moves to the state House, where it is also expected to pass. Gov. Gary Herbert (R) is also expected to sign the measure.
Senators voted 22-7 largely along party lines to pass GOP-sponsored legislation that would cap the pool o...
Cory Booker launches 2020 campaign with attempt to rewrite Big Pharma history
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) is running for president, hoping, as he said in his announcement video last week, to “channel our common pain back into our common purpose.”
The former Newark mayor announced his campaign Friday morning, doing away with the pesky business of exploratory committees and “testing the waters” to plunge right into the fray. He spent his first day on a breakneck sprint, doing three radio interviews — all with hosts of color — bef...
Dick Saslaw was the lone VA Democrat to rush to Northam’s defense. It could cost him re-election.
Virginia’s US senators Tim Kaine (D) and Mark Warner (D) late Saturday joined a growing chorus of politicians and organizations calling on Gov. Ralph Northam (D) to resign, after a racist photo from his 1984 medical school yearbook page was published by a right-wing website.
Yasmine Taeb, a progressive candidate for the Virginia State Senate, told ThinkProgress that it shouldn’t have taken them so long.
“The two highest officials in our state are older white men who w...
Ocasio-Cortez inspires Democratic presidential hopefuls to come out swinging on climate change
As the Democratic presidential primary field grows more crowded by the day, something feels a bit different this time: In the face of increasingly dire scientific warnings and a president committed to denying the existence and severity of climate change, Democratic presidential contenders are calling for urgent action to address the crisis in their first appeals to voters.
“Climate change is an existential threat to us, and we have got to deal with the reality of it,” Se...
What single-payer advocates want to hear from 2020 Democratic primary contenders
In the fall of 2017, with more than three years to go before the next presidential election, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced Medicare for All legislation in the Senate. The bill racked up a long list of high-profile co-sponsors, many of whom were already being talked about as 2020 contenders.
Since then, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Kamala Harris (D-CA), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) — all co-sponsors of Sanders bill — have jumped into the Democratic fray. So, to...
For Rep. Gwen Moore, quality coverage for people with pre-existing conditions is personal
Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI) has cancer, but she’s fighting back and did so early.
The congresswoman, representing Wisconsin’s 4th congressional district for over a decade, was first diagnosed with small lymphocytic lymphoma in June; it’s a non-Hodgkin lymphoma where the cancer originates in the lymphatic system or the disease-fighting network throughout the body.
“It is sort of a silent kind of cancer,” she told ThinkProgress by phone. “Many peo...
This is how to end government shutdowns forever
Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters on Friday that she supports permanent legislation to ensure that government shutdowns never happen again. Broadly speaking, Pelosi wants legislation providing that “any appropriations bill that does not get agreed upon within a timely fashion by the date, you automatically go into a CR” — a “continuing resolution” that maintains current spending levels.
Basically, Pelosi would replace the current default rule — that governm...
84 days after residents voted for Medicaid expansion, Utah lawmakers want to repeal or cap it
The Utah state legislature returns to work on Monday and GOP lawmakers are already proposing multiple bills that hobble a successful ballot measure to expand health care to more low-income residents.
Utah State Sen. Allen Christensen’s (R) bill would prevent the ballot initiative — “Proposition 3,” which was approved in November and allowed for a clean Medicaid expansion — from going into effect. It would do so if the federal government approves a waive...
This is why Republicans were so desperate to keep Nancy Pelosi from becoming speaker again
Nancy Pelosi has been speaker of the House for just 22 days, and she just humiliated the president of the United States.
Ever since President Donald Trump shut down much of the government last month, Pelosi has delivered a consistent message to Trump — “my offer to you is this: nothing.” On Friday, Trump took that offer, announcing his support for a short-term funding bill that will reopen the government for three weeks without any additional funding for a border w...