Several states have taken definitive stands on the Medicaid expansion; most have not.
-- Politico.com calls them "the five hell-no states." Governors of South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas have all declared that they will not expand Medicaid. (All five states are among those with the highest percentages of uninsured people.) Governors in Nevada, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa and New Jersey have said they strongly oppose the expansion but have not yet ruled it out.
-- They haven't been cast as the "hell-yes" states, but California, Washington (state and D.C.), Minnesota, Vermont, Illinois, Connecticut, Delaware and Maryland have already begun to expand Medicaid or have said they will do so.
-- Most other states are holding off on a decision for now. Several Republican governors, like Nathan Deal of Georgia, are waiting until November; if the GOP prevails in the congressional and presidential elections, they believe, the health care law itself won't survive the new Congress in 2013.
-- Meanwhile, even as the expansion debate continues, more than a dozen states have cut their Medicaid appropriations. Gov. Deal recently asked for $170 million in reductions from the Georgia program through June 2014; USA Today reports that Alabama has cut its reimbursements to doctors and dentists 10 percent and will no longer cover eyeglasses; California, which has fully embraced the expansion of Medicaid, is now charging a $15 fee for people who go to the ER for routine care and has cut payments to private hospitals by $150 million, the newspaper said.
Sources: Staff reports, The Atlantic, Kaiser Health News, USA Today, Politico.com
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