Jay Nixon, Missouri's Democratic governor, will press the Republican-controlled state legislature to adopt an expansion of Medicaid that would provide health care coverage to 300,000 of the state's poor residents, he announced Thursday.
President Barack Obama's health care reform law seeks to provide Medicaid benefits, starting in 2014, to as many as 17 million people who earn up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, which is $14,856 this year. But when the Supreme Court upheld the rest of Obamacare in June, it ruled states could opt out and allow those poor residents to remain uninsured. So far, nine Republican governors, including Rick Perry of Texas and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, have declared their states won't expand Medicaid.
"The budget I plan to submit to the legislature for fiscal year 2014 will include federal funding to provide health care for an estimated additional 300,000 Missourians -- men, women and children -- who currently have no health insurance. It's the smart thing to do and it's the right thing to do," Nixon said during a press conference at a Kansas City hospital, according to a news release.
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