WA AG: Okay, the Medicaid expansion is pretty good

[Greenbeard]

Washington's Republican Attorney General (and 2012 gubernatorial candidate) eases into the role of potential future governor:

When Republican Attorney General Rob McKenna joined the lawsuit challenging President Obama's 2010 health-care overhaul, he criticized the "massive expansion" of Medicaid as a budget buster for states.

In media interviews over the last few years, he has frequently sounded similar alarms about the Medicaid provision - once even likening it to "creeping socialism."

Lawyers representing McKenna and the other 25 states challenging the law have argued the expansion is "coercive" because it would withhold federal funds from states that don't expand their Medicaid programs.

So it's been a bit jarring to hear McKenna speak positively about the law's Medicaid provision in recent weeks.

McKenna has taken to citing the expansion as a way that health coverage can be expanded even if the health-care law's requirement that most American purchase health insurance is struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In an interview on TVW last week, McKenna called the Medicaid expansion "important" because it would give health coverage to more people. Earlier in the week, on KUOW, he noted the Medicaid expansion will help "expand coverage quite extensively in our state."

McKenna made the same point in an interview with me the previous week, saying "if you want to cover poor people without insurance, it [Medicaid] is the fastest way to get there."

So has McKenna changed his tune? It certainly seems like he's shifted his emphasis.

A huge increase in coverage with only a sliver of it paid for by the states? Yes, it's a pretty good deal for them.