Governor Rick Snyder’s administration is applauding state House Republicans for offering a plan to overhaul Medicaid in Michigan.
But as The Michigan Public Radio Network’s Jake Neher reports, the administration still has some big concerns about the proposal.
The bill introduced this week would kick able-bodied adults off of Medicaid after four years on the program. State Department of Community Health Director Jim Haveman says that’s the biggest sticking point with the administration.
But he says he and the governor are just glad to have a starting point for negotiations.
“Whenever a bill gets introduced, as you’ve heard a lot of people say, now we’ve got something to start talking about,” he says.
In his budget proposal this year, Governor Snyder asked lawmakers to accept federal dollars to expand Medicaid coverage to hundreds of thousands of people. But Republican leaders in the Legislature say they’re not willing to expand a system they see as broken.
The federal government would have to approve the state’s alternative to the plan.
