Quack-medicine advocate rookie Rep.Bobbi Andera (R-10/Sioux Falls) claims South Dakotans need “more access options” for the medications of their choosing. But she wants to deny 30,000 South Dakotans access to any affordable health care options by repealing Medicaid expansion.
Rep. Andera joins 17 of her radical Republican colleagues in sponsoring House Joint Resolution 5002, which seeks a public vote on erasing the expansion of Medicaid that South Dakotans wrote into the state constitution in 2022. HJR 5002 would also erase the Medicaid-expansion work requirement that the Legislature proposed and voters approved in 2024.
Medicaid expansion is working pretty well in South Dakota. For $45 million a year—less than we expected, said Governor Rhoden in his budget address last month—over 30,000 low-income South Dakotans get affordable health care, which means those South Dakotans stay healthier and can keep working to support their families and the economy. Medicaid expansion also helps hospitals balance their books and stay in business, a matter of keen concern for rural South Dakota.
But Medicaid expansion is people cooperating via their tax dollars to support each other, and right-wing radicals like Bobbi Andera can’t stand seeing us prove their ideology wrong through cooperation and effective use of public goods, so they want to get rid of this helpful, cost-effective policy.
HJR 5002 has to make it through committee and floor votes. It does not require the Governor’s signature. If passed, it will go on this November’s ballot… at which point I would expect South Dakota’s health care industry, which placed Medicaid expansion on the ballot in 2022, would wage a fierce campaign to protect a good state policy that supports their bottom line and the overall health and economic well-being of the state. And I would hope that South Dakotans would revolt at yet another attempt by the Legislature to undo what the people have achieved through the initiative process.