Now that Missouri's Supreme Court has ruled that about 275,000 more low-income people are eligible for Medicaid, the head of a St. Louis-based public policy group said that she hopes expansion will follow.
Amy Blouin, president of the Missouri Budget Project, which works to improve quality of life through public policy decisions and supports Medicaid expansion, told NPR she hopes that expansion will happen soon.
"As a result of the Supreme Court's ruling, Missourians across the state will finally be able to realize the health and economic benefits of Medicaid expansion," Blouin told NPR. "State after state has shown that, in addition to providing insurance to those eligible, expansion is a fiscal and economic boon to state economies and budgets."
In a Facebook post, the Missouri Budget Project cheered the state Supreme Court's ruling that upheld a 2020 ballot measure last August for an amendment to the state's constitution to allow for Medicaid expansion. The amendment also barred the state from forcing work requirements on Medicaid recipients.
"In a unanimous decision, the Missouri Supreme Court upholds the will of voters to expand Medicaid," Missouri Budget Project said in a July 22 Facebook post. "This is a huge victory for Missourians."
The High Court's ruling sided with voters and effectively added the new Medicaid recipients to the state's current recipients. The court also ruled that lawmakers in Jefferson City, the state's capital, will have to figure out what to do after current federal appropriations for Medicaid expansion run out.
Many of those same lawmakers in the state's Republican-controlled Legislature had defied the ballot results and refused to implement it, while Republican Gov. Mike Parson (R) also tried to smother expansion of the federal health care program for low-income people in the state, according to an NPR report from May.
The Legislature met in a special session last month for work on Medicaid funding in the state, according to U.S. News and World Report.
The court's subsequent action means that Missouri adults between the ages of 19 and 65 who meet income requirements are now eligible for Medicaid.
Thirty-eight states -- not all of them blue -- have either expanded Medicaid or are doing so, according to KFF.org. The majority of the 22 states that have not expanded Medicaid and are not moving to do so are in the Southeast.
