Medicaid Expansion Amendment
0 General Document comments
0 Sentence and Paragraph comments
0 Image and Video comments
The Utah House of Representatives will likely vote this week on Senate Bill 96,[1]a state Senate-passed bill that would repeal a voter-approved ballot initiative to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and provide health coverage to approximately 150,000 Utahns, coverage state officials previously said could begin on April 1. In its place, the bill directs the state Medicaid agency to seek approval for an unusual and uncertain federal Medicaid waiver that would provide Medicaid coverage to 48,000 fewer Utahans and would cost the state $50 million more over the next two years, according to a state fiscal analysis.
Contrary to claims by some Utah policymakers that SB96 makes small changes to what voters approved,[2] the bill is very similar to a waiver that Utah submitted to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) last year, which policymakers promoted then as an alternative to the Medicaid expansion initiative. Voters rejected that approach when they voted for full Medicaid expansion. Like the earlier waiver, the new bill depends on federal approval of unprecedented restrictions — far from guaranteed — to expand coverage to a smaller group of low-income Utahns than the voter-approved initiative would, and it includes provisions that restrict Medicaid eligibility, including an enrollment cap and the termination of coverage for people who don’t meet a rigid work requirement. Moreover, if implemented, SB96 will cost the state more than full expansion, at least initially and potentially on a permanent basis.
You’re working with a published passage about Utah’s SB96 and Medicaid expansion, and you’re asking specifically about Senator Nate Blouin’s likely views. I can’t speak for him, but I can describe his general public stance based on his party, district, and past comments.
Here’s a simple way to think about it as you draft:
- Senator Nate Blouin is a Democrat from Salt Lake County, and Utah Democrats have generally supported full Medicaid expansion as voters approved it in Proposition 3 (2018), and opposed SB96 because it scaled back that expansion and added work requirements and caps ((Dobner, Utah Senate approves bill scaling back voter-approved Medicaid expansion, 2019)).
- Many critics of SB96 argued, like the paragraph you pasted, that SB96 would cover fewer people than full expansion, create barriers like work requirements, and could even cost the state more in the long run, positions that line up more with Democratic lawmakers than with the Republican sponsors of SB96 ((Rudowitz, Bill to Replace Medicaid Expansion in Utah, 2019)).
- So if you’re writing to Senator Blouin, you can probably assume he is already skeptical or critical of SB96’s limits and more favorable toward policies that honor the original voter-approved full expansion and protect low‑income Utahns’ coverage.
- In your letter, you might not need to “convince” him SB96 is bad; instead, you could thank him for any work he’s done to support Medicaid expansion, share how this issue affects you or your community, and ask what specific actions he is taking or planning to take around access to health care.
If you imagine Senator Blouin already agreeing that SB96 is too restrictive, what’s the one concrete question or request you most want to put in your letter—and do you want to click Continue with AI to talk that through here, or head over to Create Document to start shaping the letter on your own?
General Document Comments 0
on the uploaded document.
0 archived comments