Another big boost for Obamacare

[DonViejo]

Source: Washington Post

By Greg Sargent August 28 at 3:40 PM

In another sign that the politics of Obamacare continue to shift, the Medicaid expansion is now all but certain to come to another big state whose Republican governor had previously resisted it: Pennsylvania.

The federal government has approved Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett’s application for the state’s own version of the Medicaid expansion, without a handful of the conditions Corbett had hoped to impose, Dem sources tell me.

Corbett just announced that he will accept the expansion that has been offered, perhaps with some last-minute changes — expanding coverage and subsidies to as many as half a million people.

This comes after months of jockeying between Corbett and the federal government. Corbett had pushed for a version of the expansion that would have imposed various conditions designed to make it more palatable to conservatives and to achieve political distance from Obamacare — while simultaneously taking all that federal money. Among them: Using the cash to pay for private coverage for the poor.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/08/28/another-big-boost-for-obamacare/

[LynneSin]

1. Corbett is getting desperate. He's still 20pts behind in the polls

and that was after announcing a slight improvement in the most recent polls.

[packman]

2. FU Corbett

too little, too late. People of Pennsylvania will see right thru that hypocrite and his desperate bid for votes.

[Lochloosa]

3. Let him keep bidding. At least Penn gets the expansion.

[jwirr]

4. Did he get his concessions?

[riversedge]

8. "without a handful of the conditions Corbett had hoped to impose" from the OP

[jwirr]

9. Wonderful. I thinks he can opt out in order to destroy the ACA and then when he wants in we are

supposed to give him concessions. Bull.

[louis-t]

5. He wants to say "this is nothing like

Obamacare".

[ebbie15644]

6. Tom Corbett knows he has lost and is just

trying to get the republican version passed before a Democratic governor takes over. If Obama is smart, he'll just wait until Tom Wolff is in office.

[riversedge]

7. We need expanded Medicare in Wisconsin also but

with Scott Walker as the gov, it is hopeless. Maybe in NOV??