By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson says he has no intention of calling legislators back in a special session to deal with Medicaid expansion.
Lawmakers during the regular legislative session refused to fund Medicaid expansion, approved by the voters last year. A unanimous Missouri Supreme Court ruling ordered them to fund it.
Parson says he will not call a special session on Medicaid expansion, but expects it to be a top priority when they regather for the regular session in January.
“I think they do need to have a say in how we move forward,” Parson tells reporters during a stop in St. Joseph. “We have a court order saying we have to implement this and that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to follow that order. As long as we can utilize that federal money, is the big thing. We just don’t want to get into General Revenue and all of the sudden take all the General Revenue we have, whether that’s infrastructure, whether that’s education, whether that’s tourism, you just name it, we just don’t want to use up all that money.”
Parson doesn’t anticipate having to withhold any money to fund Medicaid expansion over the next few months.
“So, we want to be able to have it in place where we can draw down the federal dollars,” Parson says. “But I believe we can get by, if all goes well, I think we can get by until January and then the legislators need to come in and decide what they’re going to do.”
Parson has estimated the state’s portion of expansion would be $156 million in the current fiscal year. It is estimated it will cost $1.57 billion to cover the additional 127,000 Missourians under expansion, the vast majority coming through federal funds.
Though Parson budgeted for the state’s share of Medicaid expansion, state legislators rejected his suggestions and refused to fund it. The primary complaint voiced by lawmakers was that the ballot issue that passed last year failed to establish a revenue source for the state’s portion of the cost. Lawmakers claimed it was unconstitutional, because of that. The Missouri Supreme Court disagreed.
Parson wants the legislature to funding Medicaid expansion a top priority in the next regular session. He doesn’t expect to have to withhold money to pay for it while he waits for the legislature to act.
“I don’t think we’re at that point,” Parson says. “Thank goodness with everything that’s gone over the last 18-19 months, financially, this state is in very good shape. And I’ll give that credit to the people across this state. Again, we stayed focused on keeping our business open, we kept focused on trying to build our workforce up and our infrastructure, which is paying us dividends right now that we’ve been able to go through this firestorm we’ve been through these 18, 19 months. So, I’m thankful for that. A lot of good things are happening in this state, too.”
The Missouri General Assembly convenes for its regular session at the beginning of January.