Gearing up to get Medicaid votes

SANDPOINT — There he was, barreling down a backcountry highway in rural southern Idaho in late June when a big black cow wandered in front of Reclaim Idaho’s “Medicaid Express” bus.

The group was en route from Cascade to Donnelly when the bus encountered the bovine. It was, joked Luke Mayville, who helped initiate Reclaim Idaho, the most resistance he’s seen to the movement to bring Medicaid to 62,000 Idahoans.

“I was thinking it was funny because everywhere we’ve gone around the state, especially in this last month, we find very little opposition,” Mayville told a crowd of about 18 supporters when the bus arrived in Sandpoint Thursday morning to kick off its drive to the state capitol in Boise to deliver the final signatures after their verification by county clerks.

“So here we were driving down from Cascade over to Donnelly on this backcountry highway and this giant black cow just walks out in front of me, I had the thought that ‘Wow that cow is really the most resistance we’ve had.’ ”

Overall, however, Mayville said more seriously, support has been strong to provide health care coverage to adults who make too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to be eligible to purchase health coverage through Your Health Idaho, the state’s health insurance exchange created under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

From December through April 30, Mayville said volunteers with Reclaim Idaho gathered about 100,000 signatures, 73,000 of which were verified by the state’s county clerk. About 56,192 signatures are needed to put Medicaid expansion on the statewide election ballot in November.

Before taking off for Boise in the bus — the second of two — Mayville told those who gathered, who included local and state candidates as well as local supporters, that a vast majority of Democrats and independents support the proposal as well as 53 percent of Republicans according to a recent poll.

For some, learning that 62,000 Idahoans are without health care, folks that would gain access to Medicaid if the proposal makes it onto the ballot and is approved by voters, is enough to garner their support, Mayville said.

“We’re already paying for it,” Mayville said. “And that’s in two ways. One we have this really inefficient catastrophic health care fund that just dumps money into this broken system that only covers about 5,000 people across the state. Medicaid expansion would replace that and cover 62,000 people — for less money.”

The other way Idahoans are paying for it is because 90 percent of expansion’s costs would come from federal dollars that state residents are already paying through their taxes. “We’re just not seeing those tax dollars come back to Idaho,” Mayville said.

What moves him in the drive to expand Medicaid in the state isn’t anything on the national political scene, it’s helping those like a Kootenai County resident who works two jobs, supports her four children and pays all her bills. Once those bills are paid, there’s nothing left for health care.

“I can’t afford $800 for a root canal,” Mayville said the woman named Jennifer wrote in response to a critical post against the effort. “This causes me to be ill and so I endure the pain. I work through it. I rely on my faith to erase the pain. I live with arthritis and scoliosis. I’ve worked since the age of 14 to the present age of 41 and I pay taxes each year. I don’t know if the changes of life will subject me to ovarian or other cancers because I can’t afford to find out if I’m OK.”

Medicaid expansion is a huge deal and represents a turning point in history. “Medicaid expansion would be the single biggest step forward for the health of struggling people in Idaho in 50 years,” Mayville said. “It would be the biggest reform, offer the most help for people since the enactment of Medicaid and Medicare 50 years ago, 1965.”

Medicaid expansion is only part of the effort. Other goals include electing candidates who are champions of Medicaid expansion, whether they are Democrat, independent or Republican or whatever.

“They believe in a different vision for government,” he said. “They believe in a principle of government for the people, a government that works for its people.”

And that’s the bottom line, Mayville said.

“You won’t meet a whole lot of people in the state who say they love government or that they love big government, or that they want to pay a whole lot in taxes. But nearly everyone you meet believes what Abraham Lincoln believed when he was asked about what the role of government is and he said, ‘It’s not that the government solves all of our problems but the role of government is to meet those needs we have that we cannot meet ourselves as individuals. That’s almost a universal value.’”

As the signature drive transitions to a campaign for votes in favor of the initiative, some resistance is mounting, although polling shows a majority of Idahoans across all political lines support Medicaid expansion.

Still, the Idaho Republican Party, at its convention last week in Pocatello, adopted a resolution opposing the initiative.

Betsy Russell, with the Idaho Press-Tribune, reported earlier this week that Brad Little, the party’s nominee for governor, hasn’t taken a position, saying he’ll respect the will of the voters.

Reclaim Idaho volunteers and organizers will gather in Boise today to turn in the verified signatures to Lawerence Denney, the Idaho Secretary of State. Denney will have the final say on whether the signature drive meets the requirements to have the initiative on the ballot, although signs are good it will.

As they drop off the final signatures, Mayville said supporters all across the political spectrum will be on hand, from independent to Democrat to Republican, including the effort’s co-chairs Emily Strizich, one of the original leaders of Reclaim Idaho, and state Rep. Christy Perry, a Republican state representative from Nampa.

“This campaign truly is bipartisan and it’s really important on the same day when we turn in the signatures that we make that very clear to everyone, that this initiative has widespread support in both parties,” Mayville said.

Staff writer Maureen Dolan contributed to this report.

Caroline Lobsinger can be reached by email at clobsinger@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow her on Twitter @CarolDailyBee.