GOP Legislators Thwart Governors' Bids to Expand Medicaid

WASHINGTON (AP) — Governors across the political spectrum are hitting the same roadblock in their bids to expand Medicaid with federal funds: Republican legislators who adamantly oppose "Obamacare."

Some of these governors themselves have criticized the president's health care law in general. But they've come to see Medicaid expansion as too generous to reject.

Now they're battling conservative lawmakers who say it's better to turn down billions of federal dollars than to expand Medicaid under the 2010 law.

The federal government will pay the full expansion cost for the first three years. The subsidy eventually is 90 percent.

Partisan politics have driven states' Medicaid decisions ever since the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that expansion was optional under the new law.

All Democratic governors backed expansion. Most Republican governors did not.

(Story by: Charles Babington, The Associated Press)