{"id":5332,"date":"2025-04-25T18:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-25T18:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=5332"},"modified":"2025-04-25T18:30:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T18:30:00","slug":"montana-hospitals-preserve-medicaid-expansion-fend-off-regulations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=5332","title":{"rendered":"Montana Hospitals Preserve Medicaid Expansion, Fend Off Regulations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hospitals have spent years amassing political influence at the federal and state levels. According to the nonprofit OpenSecrets<\/a>, hospitals and nursing homes\u2019 federal lobbying spending rose from $35 million in 2000 to more than $133 million last year, a 280% increase.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They recently had a unique opportunity to flex some of that political muscle in Montana, where the state\u2019s Medicaid expansion program was scheduled to expire in June unless legislators and the governor renewed it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Conservative lawmakers and groups<\/a> saw an opportunity to terminate or narrow the Medicaid expansion program that cost about $1 billion in federal and state taxpayer money last year to cover tens of thousands of low-income adults. Ultimately, the conservative Republican lawmakers who occupy state House and Senate leadership positions sought to add requirements to the program or receive concessions from hospitals, such as a promise to bolster their community benefit spending, in return for continuing the program that provides them with revenue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What was expected to be one of the more contentious debates of the legislative session never happened. The Medicaid expansion renewal bill sailed through with little difficulty and few changes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The hospitals spent the last year working to form a coalition with businesses, health clinics, physician groups, insurers, and advocates for people with low incomes to push for extension of Medicaid expansion, which provides government health coverage to about 74,500 low-income, nondisabled Montanans. That work paid off when Democratic and moderate Republicans lawmakers joined forces to push the bill through.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hospital lobbyists, led by the Montana Hospital Association, not only helped steamroll Medicaid expansion through the legislature, but they also defeated nearly all attempts to add new requirements to the program and to place new regulations on the hospitals themselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The hospitals\u2019 political pull is acknowledged by frustrated conservative lawmakers who contend that the facilities, most of which are nonprofit organizations largely exempt from state and federal taxes, need more oversight and transparency. As Republican state Sen. Greg Hertz put it, \u201cHospitals don\u2019t seem to want to come to the table to discuss anything, whether it\u2019s transparency, controlling costs, or providing more information to the public on services.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hospitals say they\u2019re willing to debate ways to improve health care in Montana. But when it comes to regulations they regard as onerous \u2014 or lawmaker criticism that they are uncooperative \u2014 they aren\u2019t shy about pushing back. \u201cI think that we\u2019ve demonstrated that we work on all kinds of health policies,\u201d said Montana Hospital Association president and CEO Bob Olsen.<\/p>\n

KFF Health News<\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF\u2014an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF<\/a>.<\/p>\n

USE OUR CONTENT<\/h3>\n

This story can be republished for free (details<\/a>).<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hospitals have spent years amassing political influence at the federal and state levels. According to the nonprofit OpenSecrets, hospitals and nursing homes\u2019 federal lobbying spending rose from $35 million in 2000 to more than $133 million last year, a 280% increase.\u00a0 They recently had a unique opportunity to flex some of that political muscle in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5333,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5332"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}