Let’s keep our communities stable, safe and healthy

In 2015, when the Legislature expanded Medicaid to cover another 100,000 Montanans, it sought to guarantee that all of us — our families, kids, friends and neighbors — would have access to health care. Expanding Medicaid was a significant bipartisan accomplishment: the bill was carried by a Republican senator, passed on a bipartisan vote, and signed by a Democratic governor. And no wonder: it reflected our common conviction that we all - particularly kids — should have access to medical care when we need it. 

But now that guarantee of health care is being unwound, and hundreds of thousands of Montanans are being deprived of their Medicaid coverage, and access to health care. 

Medicaid is provided by the states, including Montana, in partnership with the Federal government, which picks up a lion’s share of the cost. During the pandemic, Congress required the states to maintain the then current enrollment, which protected individuals from losing coverage and protected all of us by making sure everyone had access to health care during a critical public health crisis.