Idaho residents on Medicaid, doctors bemoan GOP efforts to repeal citizen-led expansion

Boise resident Jennifer Johnson has two children and works two jobs — running a business for children with disabilities and as a part-time bookkeeper. She also receives her health care coverage through Medicaid, a federal government-provided insurance for lower-income Americans. 

ut because Johnson earns too much to qualify for standard Medicaid — yet not enough for private insurance discounts — she’s like 90,000 other Idahoans, according to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, who benefit from the state’s Medicaid expansion.

But if either of two active bills in the Idaho Legislature this year were to become law, she would lose her health insurance and be unable to afford private coverage, she told the Idaho Statesman. 

Johnson is one of tens of thousands of Idahoans caught in the “Medicaid coverage gap” following passage of the Affordable Care Act under the Obama administration. Inaction from Idaho lawmakers left those low-income residents without any health insurance, and led voters in 2018 to pass a ballot initiative to implement Medicaid expansion. 

The program offers coverage to a larger number of those residents. Backed by then-Gov. Butch Otter, the citizen-led effort passed with more than 60% approval. Since then, Republican lawmakers have spent years decrying the costs of Medicaid to the state. Now, through two bills, they seek to repeal or curtail the expansion program. 

House Bill 138, sponsored by Rep. Jordan Redman, R-Coeur d’Alene, would repeal Medicaid expansion unless a set of 11 conditions are met — several of which would require federal approvals that have historically not been forthcoming. House Bill 58, sponsored by Rep. Josh Tanner, R-Eagle, would repeal Medicaid expansion outright.

Bill advanced despite 18-to-1 ratio of public opposition 

Earlier this month, Johnson, 49, told the Statesman that she reviewed the state’s health insurance exchange this month to price plans available to her if she lost her Medicaid expansion coverage. 

The cheapest health care plan she found cost $786 a month — about 60% of her income — with an $18,400 deductible, she said. “I would have to just go without coverage,” Johnson said, and likely wouldn’t be able to afford her children’s prescriptions. 

One has a developmental disability and the other has a congenital heart defect. “The whole point of why we passed Medicaid expansion is that gap.” 

Others said they are in the same boat. John Barnes, 56, of Boise, told the Statesman that without his Medicaid expansion insurance, his medications would cost $2,500 a month — more than double his income on a doctor-restricted work schedule.

Redman told House committee members this month that his bill is a “common-sense” proposal to “restore integrity, fiscal responsibility and self-sufficiency back into our Medicaid program.”