Sen. Marv Hagedorn, R-Meridian, the Senate co-chair of the Legislature’s working group studying the health coverage gap, warned that the panel should limit its focus. “We’re focused on Medicaid. And I don’t want to get us confused with just general insurance companies and how we’re going to change their lives,” he said. “Medicaid is state and federal insurance. And we’re trying to figure out how are we going to manage those dollars most efficiently in Idaho.”

Hagedorn suggested that the panel “focus on sideboards.” He said he’s no expert on federal waivers and the like, “But I do know what my constituents have told me that they don’t want to do.  So I do think we’re much better off on focusing on: Where are we going to set our sideboards?” In “an Idaho model,” he said, the panel should delineate its sideboards, “then provide that model to the rest of the Legislature, see if they’re going to adjust those sideboards or whatever that might be ... see if we can get something we can hand to Health & Welfare.” He noted that there’ll be a new president come January, “and that’s going to also complicate. So I think we need to focus on what our sideboards are going to be to take care of this problem, and reinvent how we do Medicaid, and not get so far down in the weeds that we get ourselves lost.”