Medicaid a vital issue for Wismer in governor’s race

Will Medicaid expansion be a winning issue for Susan Wismer in her battle to unseat Gov. Dennis Daugaard?

Wismer, the Democratic nominee for governor, is campaigning across the state in favor of covering tens of thousands of low-income South Dakotans in an expanded Medicaid program. She said it not only would help the uninsured but would bolster hospitals by covering medical care they now are absorbing themselves.

“It’s one of the most important focuses of my campaign,” Wismer said last week as she left a meeting about Medicaid expansion at Sisseton’s hospital. “That hospital, it’s a small, critical-access care hospital. Their bad debt would probably decrease by close to half a million dollars a year if we had expanded Medicaid.”

It’s unclear how Medicaid expansion will resonate with South Dakota voters. The only available poll on the issue found 63 percent in favor of expanding Medicaid, but it was conducted by a group lobbying for that expansion, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network.

Wismer predicted South Dakotans would support Medicaid expansion “when people really understand it as an issue that’s important to the survival of their community health care institutions, (and) that it’s important to their friends and neighbors that have jobs that do not afford them health care.”

Political science professor Jon Schaff said Wismer’s Medicaid focus could boost her campaign — if she sells it well.

“Greater support for expanding Medicaid only becomes a phenomena to the extent that Susan Wismer is successful in promoting it,” Schaff said. “We’ll have to see as she goes around the state, is this something that seems to catch hold? ... To the extent it does, it will bolster her campaign, and, we assume, it will put greater pressure on the Legislature and whoever will be governor next year to actually expand Medicaid.”

Daugaard hasn’t closed the door on Medicaid expansion, but has rejected the federal government’s offer to pay for 90 percent of the cost of Medicaid expansion, and more of it the first several years.

He asked the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for permission to follow a different plan: covering only the poorer half of the 48,000 South Dakotans eligible for Medicaid expansion, while leaving the less-poor half to get subsidized coverage on the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges. That request was rejected.

Now, Daugaard is waiting as other states negotiate their own deals and compromises with the federal government, content to let them take the lead — and the risk.

“What alternative we end up using, if any, should align with South Dakota values where we value self-reliance and independence, and helping those who cannot help themselves, but asking those who can to do so,” Daugaard said this year.

Mike Myers, the independent running for governor, also supports expanding Medicaid. He says he would seek a waiver that “gives priority to nursing homes (and) long-term care.”