Medicaid wins again

Another red state shows that Republican ideas about healthcare remain unpopular pretty much everywhere:

Missouri voters on Tuesday approved Medicaid expansion to many of the state’s poorest adults, making their conservative state the second to join the Obamacare program through the ballot during the pandemic.

The Missouri ballot measure expands Medicaid to about 230,000 low-income residents at a time when the state’s safety net health care program is already experiencing an enrollment surge tied to the pandemic’s economic upheaval. The measure was up 52 percent to 48 percent, with 83 percent of precincts reporting, when the Associated Press projected the win for expansion.

A winning streak: Missouri becomes the sixth red state where voters have defied Republican leaders to expand Medicaid, just weeks after Oklahoma voters narrowly backed the program. No state has ever voted down such a ballot initiative in recent years, underscoring the popularity of Medicaid expansion even in parts of the country hostile to Obamacare.

Well, not really so hostile, but anyway!

Also important is the nature of this pro-Medicaid coalition:

P olitically advocating for
M edicaid
C overage expansion to workers above the poverty line; 200,000 additional covered https://t.co/CvFiL2ZGws— Mike Konczal (@rortybomb) August 5, 2020

The same thing was true about the Medicaid expansion in Maine.

The idea that it’s unpossible for suburban professionals to support a progressive economic agenda has always been based on primarily aesthetic assumptions, not data. But however much you’d rather be in a political coalition with a burly welder from West Virginia rather than your real estate broker mother in suburban Michigan, the fact is that the latter is much more likely to be in favor of an expansive welfare state in 2020 than the former.