Donald Trump’s selection of Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate is causing some reverberations here in Virginia on an issue that’s near and dear to Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe — expanding Medicaid to 400,000 people who live in poverty or with disabilities.
Pence may be a movement conservative with strong ties to the evangelical wing of the party, but he’s also one of the few Republican governors who has expanded Medicaid health insurance to people who live in poverty or with disabilities. That was originally supposed to be true of all states under the Affordable Care Act until the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that expanding Medicaid was optional for the states. Robert Guttman at George Mason University suspects Trump may not have known or even cared about this issue.
“He was trying to get a conservative, and they probably didn’t vet him enough to show that he favored Medicaid expansion."
Geoff Skelley at the University of Virginia Center for Politics says Republican legislatures have been solidly against expanding Medicaid, even though it had some support among Republican governors.
“For example in Ohio, John Kasich basically went around the Ohio legislature because of its option to expanding it, so it’s a situation where the executive differs from how the legislature operates."
The issue of Medicaid expansion has a higher profile here in Virginia, because Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe campaigned on the issue, and so far, he’s been unable to deliver on that campaign promise.
