The hospital lobby has finally filed its final Medicaid expansion initiative petition for circulation. The Secretary of State stamped the petition approved on March 25, but the Internet Archive Wayback Machine indicates the SOS didn’t get the petition up for us to look at until March 30 or later.
The hospital lobby’s copycat petition drive is fronted by official sponsor and American Cancer Society Midwest Division chief mission officer Laurie Jensen Wunder. Its ballot question committee, South Dakotans Decide Healthcare, is chaired and treasured by Jensen Wunder’s colleague at the American Cancer Society, government relations director David W. Benson (not to be confused, it appears, with the American Cancer Society’s North Region VP David Benson. South Dakotans Decide Healthcare says some of the same things on their website in favor of Medicaid expansion that the petitioners they are copying, Dakotans for Health, say on theirs: getting off the bench and accepting the hundreds of millions of dollars the feds have been offering South Dakota for years would insure tens of thousands of South Dakotans and help keep rural hospitals open. SDDH does not, however, say on its website the things Dakotans for Health says about how to get a petition and start circulating, or how to donate to support the cause. Nor does the hospital lobby’s website include any apparent updates of its status beyond the coalition it announced back in December; their website shows no sign of the activity visible on the Dakotans for Health blog, which in the past month has announced the hiring of a grassroots organizer, recruitment of a tribal spokesman, and the endorsements of multiple local labor unions (see also here and here). So even at this moment, the hospital lobby’s petition drive appears to exist only on paper, albeit a newly and importantly approved paper from the Secretary of State.
Both organizations are proposing a Constitutional amendment, which would prevent the Legislature from directly repealing Medicaid expansion if voters approve it. Both amendments include language that appears to forestall the fiscal veto Missouri Republicans are trying to exert by refusing to fund the Medicaid expansion their voters approved last August. The Dakotans for Health amendment requires that the Legislature “provide by law any provisions necessary to implement” Medicaid expansion, and funding would be a necessary provision. The copycat amendment from SDDH mandates that the state “take all actions necessary to maximize the federal financial medical assistance package in funding medical assistance pursuant to this section,” which seems to include providing the 10% matching funds (less at the moment, given the incentives the Biden stimulus package offers) necessary to get the feds’ big checks.
When the hospital lobby does get around to putting its approved petition on the street, remember: you have nothing to lose by signing both petitions. There is no bad petition circulating right now, and the more chances we have of putting Medicaid expansion on the ballot, the better.
The Chairman’s Health Board, is with the Hospital on this one as well. For once the Monument and the Tribes have something in common. Though, no word of how the hosp. claims “tens of millions” that is owed to them by IHS. O.S.T., President, supports Monuments efforts of a CMS Medicaid funding. Will it help the ailing, decaying IHS. It was a sad, day when Michael Weahkee, resigned, He was making headways with IHS,…got Rosebud, Pine Ridge and Sioux San back from the edge of Immediate Jeopardy. PR, now is stable especially with the new CEO. Can’t say that about Regional. All fixated on the Land Resolution, that it won’t engage in the recommendations of the National Council, one was to make peace, with the Tribes. This effects the ability of the recommendations by the National Council of Behavior Health, and to think, a Charity Org. paid for the Study.
Pass both. Hopefully, Democratic and Green progressives can take over the Leg in 2023.
[Will R, I get the sense you have trouble staying on topic. Do you have some thoughts on Medicaid expansion and these petition drives? If not, maybe you’d like to get yourself a free WordPress or Blogger account and work out your thoughts in long form there?]
SD20, it would be really interesting to see South Dakotans pass Medicaid expansion twice in one election. Each amendment calls for adding a new section to Article 21… so I wonder… would we have to interpret that as meaning there would be two copycat sections mandating Medicaid expansion in the Constitution? Or would the LRC Code Counsel say we need to merge both amendments? I’m willing to sign both petitions, but I think once both petitions are submitted, approved for the ballot, and appear to be clear of petition challenges, it would be a good idea for the sponsors to put their heads together, decide whose amendment is better (if there is any substantive difference, which I still don’t think there is) and agree to withdraw one and unite behind the other, just to avoid any electoral or legal confusion.
I see a big R party push against both Amendments. They’ll take advantage of the 2, sowing confusion. I would be pleasantly surprised if it polls as good as rec. Marijuana. One of the 2 should pass 50%, whoever advertises and clarifies it better.
The R establishment hates I and R, and also hates helping low income people. I am doubtful that the Democratic Party will have an Aha! Martin Luther King moment of understanding that economic advancement and racial equality and equity go hand in hand together.
Denny Sanford is too Republican to tip the boat. I think it might take a charismatic brilliant tech guy in South Dakota to say, what the fork, I ‘ll serve for 4 years and then turn it over to the next person. Crony capitalism is not a jewel glistening in the night. We can create a new economy for everyone, if we listen to Bernie, Yunus and the true rock stars of ideas!
I could care less if the Democratic Party or the Bull Moose Party is needed. New ideas are very needed. We need to Obama and Stacy Abrams our way into being a Brilliant State, not a bottom feeding subsidized red state. Brilliance includes Everybody.
I’d welcome the GOP push against the Medicaid amendments. Let them hang themselves out in 2022 as opponents of health care access. Let them show to all the voters that want practical health care reforms and a big infusion of federal cash that the Republicans put ideology over practical benefits for South Dakotans. Let them make the whole 2022 election about Medicaid and helping people. We can win that debate, and we can win the Governorship and seats in the Legislature on it.
Seven years ago, SDDH’s parent group, SDAHO, produced a report showing that over ten years of investing in Medicaid expansion, South Dakota would enjoy a net gain of $1.383 billion and 29,500 jobs. SDAHO should update that chart and hand out copies to the Republicans who try pushing against Medicaid expansion.
Tim Rave must find it awkward leading SDAHO now that it is promoting a ballot measure. Six years ago when Rave was Senator, he urged his colleagues to ignore the will of the voters and undo a key part of the minimum wage increase they approved in 2014:
What will SDAHO President Tim Rave say to the 2023 Legislature if his successors try to sabotage a voter-approved Medicaid expansion?
Seven years ago, then-Senator Rave said he could support a smaller Medicaid expansion that targeted only deserving low-income people. The ballot question his organization supports now contains no test for deserving ness other than the standard income threshold. When the feds turned down a proposal along those lines, Senator Rave threw cold water on the idea of pursuing Medicaid expansion further.
Tim Rave must have undergone multiple changes of mind to support the measure his organization is promoting now.
According to the final report of the Medicaid expansion task force on which Rave and Deb Peters sat as legislators in 2013, had we expanded Medicaid right away in 2014, then from 2014 through June 2020, South Dakota would have spent $102.2M of its own money and received $2.06B from the feds. That’s a return of over $20 for each $1 we’d have spent.
Wow.
“Big mistake. Big mistake.” (Julia Roberts-i met her one night, during a snowstorm, getting gas, in the middle of nowhere Wyoming. I love Wyoming:) She’s got her $102.2M
Rave has never been anything but a milksop with an appropriate name.
Mr. Rave, the elder, hired his own son to pimp this measure initiated. His family is in it for the money.