Three Southern state legislative leaders appear open to expanding health coverage to low-income residents in changes from previous rhetoric.
House speakers from Georgia , Mississippi , and Alabama said Republican lawmakers are looking into the expansion concept, which could result in nearly 500,000 people getting insurance in all three states combined, according to the think tank KFF.
“Eight years ago you would have had to dance around the jargon you used because Obamacare still had this bad branding with Republicans, but these days I don’t even think you have to do that,” Brian Robinson, a Republican strategist in Georgia, told Politico. “The politics have changed because the facts have changed.”
Alabama House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter said lawmakers need to have more conversations about expanding coverage in the state and that a “private-public partnership” to do so “makes a lot of sense.”
A spokesman for Ledbetter said the top lawmaker is not advocating an expansion but that lawmakers need to explore all options.