Election Will Leave Medicaid Policies Largely Unchanged [NYTimes.com]

The re-election of four Republican governors means that the future of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act is unlikely to change course.

Republicans in Florida, Wisconsin, Maine and Kansas won their bids for re-election. Three of them — Scott Walker in Wisconsin, Sam Brownback in Kansas and Mr. LePage in Maine— oppose expansion of the program. Rick Scott, the Republican governor of Florida, has endorsed the expansion, which would extend coverage to an estimated 848,000 people, but has never advocated for it forcefully, and he is not expected to now.

And one state that has expanded its program might reverse course. In Arkansas, the legislature has to reauthorize the program every year with a three-quarters majority, leaving the expansion vulnerable to political shifts. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican who appears to be unenthusiastic about the expansion, was elected governor. And opponents of expansion picked up two critical votes in the state Senate.

[For more of this story, written by Josh Barro and Margot Sanger-Katz, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11...p;abt=0002&abg=1]