Medicaid expansion bill clears state House

Editor’s note: HB 245 cleared the House on a third vote on Feb. 10, and now moves to State Senate.

A bill to continue Montana’s Medicaid expansion cleared an initial vote in the state House on Feb. 7, a mile marker for one of the most high-consequence policies lawmakers are debating this session.

The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Ed Buttrey, R-Great Falls, would lift the 2025 sunset on the low-income health care program that insures roughly 75,000 Montana adults between the ages of 18 and 65. The jointly funded state-federal program has been in place since 2015. It survived another cliff in 2019 when a bipartisan group of lawmakers voted to maintain it with a termination date of this summer.