Medicaid expansion is dead for now in the Missouri House. Two separate House committees voted down efforts Monday to expand Medicaid to 259,000 Missourians next year and 41,000 more in later years.
House Democratic Floor Leader Jake Hummel of St. Louis was the chief sponsor of a bill that would have fulfilled Governor Jay Nixon’s call to expand Medicaid in Missouri.
“We’re talking about the creation of 24,000 jobs in the state of Missouri,” Hummel said. “$8.2 billion in federal investment, $9.6 billion in additional economic activity.”
Republican Jay Barnes of Jefferson City chairs the House Committee on Government Oversight.
“The way I see this is sort of a Brinks truck theory of economic development, where we ask the federal government to send as many Brinks trucks full of borrowed cash from China as it can possibly gather together and dump it into Missouri’s economy,” Barnes said.
Barnes’ committee rejected the Medicaid expansion bill on a 2 to 5 vote Monday. He’s also one of the main sponsors of the Republicans’ alternate Medicaid proposal, which he says will be filed Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the House subcommittee that oversees the three state agencies that handle Medicaid approved their budgets for next year without the Governor’s proposed Medicaid expansion.
Republican Sue Allen of St. Louis County chairs that subcommittee.
“We can’t afford it. It’s not rocket science. If we expand, taking federal dollars now, which I do not believe would not use some state G-R (general revenue), even with what we’re told the feds would do now, there will be a time (when) the feds will back off,” Allen said.
