At the federal level, health care legislation appears to be stalled. Republicans can’t agree on what they want to do while Democrats also don’t agree — and even if they did, they have no power to enact anything. Several state governments, however, have been trying their hand at significant health policy innovation.
In Nevada, both chambers of the state legislature recently passed a bill that would allow any resident to buy into the state’s Medicaid program. Termed the Nevada Care Plan, the measure’s original author, Democratic Assemblyman Mike Sprinkle, intends for his bill to sidestep the GOP’s efforts at the federal level to roll back Medicaid.
“Imagine a Medicaid expansion that could provide coverage to all Nevadans. One that would give every Nevadan an opportunity to purchase a plan with Medicaid-like benefits on the insurance market,” Sprinkle wrote in a May 30 editorial promoting his measure. “An expansion that would create more options for patients in counties where they currently only have one option for health insurance — putting control back in patients’ hands.”
Under the Nevada Care Plan, anyone, including people receiving federal subsidies for health care, could purchase a Medicaid insurance plan. Such plans would be included in the state’s health care exchange website, competing with private companies’ offerings.
It’s an interesting proposal and one likely to prove influential, even if the state’s Republican governor, Brian Sandoval, decides not to sign it.
However, despite his “R” label, there is some possibility that Sandoval may actually approve the bill. As New York Magazine’s Ed Kilgore notes, the governor has been one of a few Republicans who has strongly supported the Medicaid expansion of Obamacare. And according to the Reno Gazette-Journal, Sandoval strongly opposes the American Health Care Act that recently passed out of the U.S. House of Representatives.
But Nevada isn’t the only state trying to take a different approach to expand health insurance coverage. Earlier this month, California’s state senate approved a preliminary measure that would provide health insurance to all residents at an estimated $400 billion tab.