SD Republicans Believe Medicaid Worse Than Marijuana

When I took my deep drag yesterday morning on the Legislature’s big marijuana bong, I noted in passing that Representative Will Mortenson’s Republican friends (and Republicans are the prime sponsors of all 26 marijuana bills in the hopper) appear to be ignoring his advice to leave marijuana policy alone until after voters get their say on the marijuana initiative that he is sure will make the November ballot. Mortenson expressed this wish even though marijuana initiative organizers had not at the time of his writing over a month ago yet submitted their initiative petition for a repeat vote on legalizing marijuana. Those organizers still have not submitted their petition; South Dakotans for Better Marijuana Laws continue to collect signatures, as evidenced by their advertisement on this blog. Republicans could still halt their efforts the moment SDBML submits its petition to the Secretary of State—What? Steve got the petition, and it has 20K+ good signatures? Whoa, horse! Withdraw all of our bills! Let the people decide!—but I find that prospect highly unlikely. I’d suggest it’s more likely that marijuana advocates will pack the committee rooms and lobbies this winter to shape those 26 marijuana bills, and if they get what they want, they’ll call off the drive for another statewide vote.

Arguably, Mortenson’s Republican friends are deferring to the people by recognizing that all this petitioning signals that South Dakotans want legal marijuana and proposing Senate Bill 3 to codify that popular want. But I won’t make that argument, because if legislators really tuned their lawmaking to popular initiatives, they’d have Medicaid expansion right alongside marijuana legislation.

Consider that while one group is circulating a marijuana petition, two groups have been pushing Medicaid expansion initiatives. Rick Weiland’s Dakotans for Health has been engaging grassroots circulators around the state since November 2019 in circulating petitions to put Medicaid expansion on the ballot. The hospital lobby put together South Dakotans Decide Healthcare for the same purpose and placed a Medicaid expansion amendment (Amendment D!) on the November 2022 ballot.

The voters are sending at least as strong a signal with Amendment D (not to mention every poll I can find on the subject) that they want to expand Medicaid. Plus, the policy evidence from every state that has expanded Medicaid is paints a far more uniformly positive picture of the policy impacts of expanding Medicaid than we get from various states’ experience with legalizing marijuana. Expanding Medicaid saves lives, boosts state budgets, and stimulates the economy. Legalizing pot just means we stop putting people in jail and start taxing them for an already widespread activity of questionable value.

Helping 42,500 South Dakotans get affordable health insurance is a great social good. Adding another sin tax to South Dakota’s budget gimmicks is at best a shrug at behavior of little social value.

Medicaid is far more useful than marijuana. South Dakotans want both. Yet South Dakota Republicans will consider legalizing marijuana even as they resist Medicaid expansion. Will Mortenson belongs to topsy-turvy party that believes Medicaid is worse for people than marijuana.