2025 Legislative Session

Medicaid Expansion in 2025!

It’s not too early to gear up for the 2025 Legislative Session. One of the largest healthcare initiatives is removing the sunset for Medicaid Expansion. Medicaid was expanded in 2017 after a long-fought battle for the ability to provide healthcare services to the needy in Montana. To date, Montana has seen tremendous economic benefit from expanding Medicaid.

See a recent objective report here: https://mthcf.org/resource/medicaid-in-montana-2023/. It’s imperative that we remove the sunset for Medicaid Expansion and make it the way we do business in Montana.

Here are some talking points for you:

• 76% of Montana’s adult Medicaid enrollees aged 19-64 reported working full time, working part time, or attending school.
• In 2021, more than 61,000 expansion enrollees utilized preventive services, more than 34,000 received mental health services, and more than 5,500 received substance use disorder treatment.
• Medicaid expansion generated state budget savings of more than $27 million in SFY 2022 by providing higher match rates for some existing Medicaid populations and by replacing existing state spending with new federal dollars.
• Uncompensated care costs for Montana’s Critical Access Hospitals declined by 35% between 2016 and 2021 with no rural hospitals closing during that time.