After impassioned debate, the Senate has voted 27-8 in favor of HB 644, the amended bill that now requests the Idaho Department of Health & Welfare to start work on a waiver request to allow Idaho to tap federal Medicaid expansion funds for an Idaho-designed program to provide managed care to the state’s gap population, those who make less than 100 percent of the federal poverty level, and therefore don’t qualify for subsidized insurance through the state insurance exchange. Lawmakers still would have approval next year before anyone could be enrolled.

Sen.  Todd Lakey, R-Nampa, said, “We know that the Affordable Care Act created this problem with the gap. … We live in the world we live in as a result of the Affodable Care Act, and this is a problem that needs to be addressed. I oppose Medicaid expansion, but I don’t look at this as Medicaid expansion. Medicaid is a defective system of care. But I can live with Medicaid reform, in the world that we live in now. I think this request allows us to explore that opportunity.”

Sen. Marv Hagedorn, R-Meridian, said it’s time to “figure out how to make lemonade out of lemons. This is the best lemonade we can put together right now, to try and get ourselves some type of a waiver that we can then look at next session and choose to implement if we find that appropriate.”

The amended bill now goes back to the House for possible concurrence in the Senate amendments. 

The eight “no” votes came from Sens. Bayer, DenHartog, Mortimer, Nonini, Nuxoll, Patrick, Souza and Vick.