Nixon says Medicaid expansion could help small businesses, low-wage employees

Gov. Jay Nixon's new proposal to help small businesses provide health insurance for their employees is tied to Medicaid expansion.

Speaking at the Cape Girardeau Area Chamber of Commerce, the governor said his plan, called Missouri Health Works, targets businesses with fewer than 150 employees.

It would pay a portion of employers' health insurance costs for employees earning below 138 percent of the poverty level, or $27,310 annually for a family of three. That's roughly equal to an employee working 40 hours a week at $13 per hour.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, speaks Monday, April 28, 2014 at a news conference with Missouri House Speaker Tim Jones at the Cape Girardeau Area Chamber of Commerce. (Fred Lynch)

Nixon said the idea was proposed to address the "very real, costly challenges" facing small businesses that may have difficulty meeting new requirements under the Affordable Care Act.

"As businesses here in this region can attest, the rising costs of health insurance combined with the new requirements under the Affordable Care Act are putting a real strain on employers and making it harder for them to grow jobs," he said.

He quoted a statistic from the National Federation of Independent Businesses that says the cost of health insurance has been the No. 1 concern among small businesses for 25 years in a row.

Missouri House Speaker Tim Jones speaks at a news conference Monday, April 28, 2014 at the Cape Girardeau Area Chamber of Commerce. (Fred Lynch)

The governor's new plan will use dollars available through Medicaid expansion to pay about 60 percent of the employers' cost of health care premiums to their low-wage workers. Typically, he said, these are the workers who go without insurance because neither the employer nor the employee can afford it.

"Too often the easiest way for these employees to get insurance is to quit their jobs. That's wrong," Nixon said.

But the governor noted that the only way for his plan to take effect is if the Missouri General Assembly takes action on Medicaid expansion, an idea that may not be popular among many.

"I don't expect the General Assembly to support Obamacare, but I do expect them to listen to small businesses and evaluate the situation on the merits, rather than the politics, to come up with a solution that's right for the Show Me State," he said. "Simply put, there are no more excuses for inaction."

Missouri Speaker of the House Tim Jones, R-Eureka, said in a news conference immediately following the governor's that he was pleased to hear Nixon wanted to move forward with Medicaid expansion, but said this was his first time hearing of the proposal.

"This is the first time -- and I had to come down here to Cape to hear it -- that I've heard any specifics from the governor as to any kind of specific plan," Jones said. "But he proposed it here in the last three weeks of session after two years of discussion."

The speaker said he needed time to review the plan, but had some concerns about putting taxpayer money into a "broken system."

John Mehner, president and CEO of the Cape Girardeau Area Chamber of Commerce, said at the beginning of Nixon's news conference that the chamber would support Medicaid expansion, but only if it came with significant reform. Like Jones, he said the chamber would have to review the governor's plan before deciding whether to support it.

srinehart@semissourian.com

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