We Passed Medicaid Expansion, Now To Get It Funded!

Amendment 2 will provide healthcare to more than 230,000 Missourians - those who work in grocery stores and pharmacies, home health workers in nursing homes, front office staff at hospitals and health clinics.

The people have spoken and Medicaid Expansion passed. Now that we have expanded the program we need to make sure that it is fully funded to help insure 230,000 of our neighbors. While this will bring almost a billion dollars back to Missouri from the federal government, we do need to protect the current public health programs from suffering state budget cuts.

In the past, we've seen the Legislature create barriers to prevent qualified individuals from receiving this life saving health care coverage. With your help we have been successful in stopping these attempts before, but we need your help to to do it again.

Nationally, 28% of adults with Medicaid coverage have a history of cardiovascular disease. Medicaid provides critical access to prevention, treatment, disease management, and care coordination services for these individuals. Because low-income populations are disproportionately affected by CVD – with these adults reporting higher rates of heart disease, hypertension, and stroke – Medicaid serves as the coverage backbone for the healthcare services these individuals need.

For these reasons, the American Heart Association supports Medicaid expansion in Missouri!

Too many people in our state work at jobs that don’t offer health insurance; many of them in industries that are experiencing the highest rates of unemployment, like hairdressers, retail workers, bartenders and wait staff, forcing hundreds of thousands of our neighbors and family members to choose between life-saving care and putting food on the table.

Since 2014 alone, nine rural hospitals have shuttered their doors and closed for good, forcing people to drive longer distances to reach a hospital when suffering from a heart attack or another medical emergency. By voting "yes" on Amendment 2, we can deliver healthcare to Missourians who have lower-paying jobs that don’t come with insurance, and we can protect rural healthcare.

Helping our neighbors get healthcare is not only the right thing to do – it is also the financially responsible thing to do. Medicaid expansion will bring more than a billion of our tax dollars home from Washington every year. That’s money 36 other states are already getting, but our state is losing out. We can help our uninsured neighbors get access to medical care and boost our economy – by bring our money home and putting our residents first.

Join us and pledge to vote on August 4th to support Amendment 2!