Tag: Ballot Initiative

"I voted" sticker on a finger.

Election Round Up: Medicaid Expansion is an Electoral Winner

Rahul Nayak Leave a comment

With the midterm elections now behind us, I thought it was time to revisit a prior blog post where I discussed the prospects of state Medicaid expansion ballot propositions in Idaho, Utah, and Nebraska. I had predicted that despite the conservative nature of these states, Medicaid expansion would have a good chance of passing due to the program’s popularity.

Indeed, voters in all three states endorsed Medicaid expansion. It received 60 percent support in Idaho and 53 percent in both Utah and Nebraska.

The latter two results were closer than what I was expecting.

In the case of Utah this may because a funding mechanism was explicitly included as part of the ballot proposal. Regardless, this means that roughly 300,000 people will be newly eligible for Medicaid. Not only do may patients stand to benefit, but this could be a huge boon for struggle rural and safety-net hospitals. Read More

Update: Proposition 46

Emily Largent Leave a comment

By Emily Largent

I previously wrote about California Proposition 46–which proposed to raise the cap on pain and suffering awards in malpractice cases from $250,000 to $1.1 million, require doctors to check a statewide database of drug prescriptions before prescribing some narcotics, and require doctors to undergo random drug and alcohol testing–here.

What happened?  On Tuesday, voters “soundly defeated a proposal to lift a decades-old cap on courtroom damages for medical negligence, after a multimillion-dollar political duel pitting trial lawyers against doctors and insurers.”  Proposition 46 was defeated by a 2-to-1 margin, with 67% of voters rejecting it. (There is some speculation that an error in translation for voter materials could have affected the way Vietnamese-speaking voters voted on Tuesday; however, there is no suggestion this would have changed the outcome.)

Proposition 46 was the most expensive race in California this election.  The No side spent close to $60 million in its efforts to see the Proposition defeated, almost seven times the spending on the Yes side.