A Missouri judge has ruled that state lawmakers, including Missouri’s Republican Gov. Mike Parson, can no longer deny adults who are newly eligible for Medicaid from accessing the program.
Cole County Judge Jon Beetem, who had initially ruled in favor of allowing Parson and other Republicans the ability to restrict eligible participants earlier this year, changed his ruling after the state Supreme Court had found the legal arguments he had favored were improperly accepted. In his opinion published on Tuesday, Beetem said he was changing his initial finding “in accordance with the Mandate of the Supreme Court of Missouri.”
The state Supreme Court’s ruling had been a unanimous one.
Beetem’s new ruling also requires the state to treat newly eligible Medicaid participants similarly to those who are already in the program, and forbids the state from offering different tiers of benefits to Medicaid recipients.
The ruling on Tuesday affirms a referendum outcome from August 2020, which saw more than 53 percent of Missourians vote in favor of expanding the state’s Medicaid program in accordance with the Affordable Care Act (ACA). While the outcome of that vote was hailed at the time by health advocates as a promising step forward, Republicans in the state have since tried to block the expansion, through court challenges and legislative actions.
But those challenges would no longer remain obstacles to individuals getting Medicaid coverage.
“People who make up to 138 percent of [the] federal poverty level [in Missouri] can start applying now,” wrote St. Louis Public Radio correspondent Jason Rosenbaum. “It will take some time to get enrolled, but they can’t be denied coverage. Medicaid expansion in Missouri has arrived.”
Parson, reacting to the order on Tuesday, said he would “follow the law.” But he also expressed doubts over his and other lawmakers’ ability to find funding for the program, stating that one of the ways he could do so might be to lessen the benefits that Medicaid recipients in his state receive.
“We don’t have the funding to support it right now. So we’ve got to figure out how we’re going to do that, you know, whether we’re going to dilute the pool of money that we have now for the people that’s on the program, and just how we’re going to move forward,” Parson said.
Those comments from Parson suggest that the slashing of Medicaid benefits may become the next major political battle on health care in the state.
With Missouri now officially legally bound to expand access to Medicaid, 38 states plus Washington, D.C. have now adopted Medicaid expansions. Twelve states, however, have opted out of doing so since the ACA became law more than 10 years ago. (States were given the opportunity to opt out of the expansion because of a federal Supreme Court ruling on the law in 2012.)
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, hundreds of studies have shown positive outcomes from states’ Medicaid expansion, including greater access and utilization of care, healthcare affordability, and even improvements to states’ economies. One study from the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2019 suggested that thousands of lives — around 19,000 in total — have been saved due to states deciding to opt into expanding their Medicaid programs through the ACA. Conversely, around 15,000 lives have been lost because states have refused to accept funding to expand their programs, that same study found.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 182 new monthly donors in the next 24 hours.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy