JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Given the choice of whether to expand Medicaid under President Barack Obama's health care law, many Republican governors and lawmakers initially responded with an emphatic "no."
Now they are increasingly hedging their objections.
A new "no, but …" approach is spreading among GOP states in which officials are still publicly condemning the Democratic president's Medicaid expansion yet floating alternatives that could provide health coverage to millions of low-income adults while potentially tapping into billions of federal dollars that are to start flowing in 2014.
The Medicaid health care program for poor, which is jointly funded by the federal and state governments, already covers about one in five people in the U.S. Expanding it was the way Obama envisioned covering many more low-income workers who don't have insurance. The new Republican alternatives being proposed in states generally would go part of the way, but cover fewer people than Obama's plan, guarantee less financial help or rely more on private insurers.
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