Virginia approves expanded Medicaid

RICHMOND, Va. — The Republican-controlled Virginia General Assembly gave final approval Wednesday evening to a state budget expanding Medicaid coverage to the state’s poor, ending years of partisan gridlock on the issue.

The state Senate voted in favor of expansion after a full day of debate. The House, which had had previously endorsed expansion, gave its final approval shortly afterward. Several Republicans in both chambers joined with Democrats to approve the measure.

Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam is expected to sign the budget in coming days, and the roughly 400,000 newly eligible low-income Virginians will begin enrolling in Medicaid at the start of next year.

Expanding Medicaid was a key provision of President Barack Obama’s 2010 health care overhaul, and a tally from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows Virginia will become the 33rd state to approve Medicaid expansion.

Senate passage came by a 23-17 vote with four Republicans joining Democrats for passage. The House quickly followed about an hour later with a lopsided 67-31 final endorsement.

Wednesday’s voting marked the end of a more than four-year battle over whether Virginia should expand the publicly funded health care program for the poor. A fight over Medicaid expansion led to a standoff over the state budget in 2014 and again this year.

Virginia Democrats have argued that the state should not pass up the roughly $2 billion in extra federal funding the program would provide the state. Republicans had previously been near unified in blocking past expansion efforts, saying the long-term costs were unsustainable.

Sen. Ben Chafin, a lawmaker from Virginia’s economically depressed southwest coal country, was one of the Republicans who joined Democrats in voting for the measure. He said his rural area needed expansion to help bolster its hospitals and provide care for constituents in need.

“I came to the conclusion that no just wasn’t the answer anymore,” Chafin said.