Republican Governors Weigh Medicaid Expansion

By Meghan McCarthy | Friday, June 29, 2012 | 12:06 p.m.

Republican governors didn’t get the decision they bargained for when they sued the federal government over the health reform law, but they did get one consolation prize: the option to drop a major Medicaid expansion.

So far, many of them are considering it, according to The Wall Street Journal. Mississippi Republican Gov. Phil Bryant told the paper he would resist any expansion of Medicaid that could threaten the state’s budget, while a spokesman for South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said they would not “shove more South Carolinians into a broken system.”

Not every Republican governor who dislikes “Obamacare” is ready to refuse the free Medicaid money. Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and Lousiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said on a conference call that they were not ready to say if their states would refuse the Medicaid money.