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calendar for the critical decisions to be made. Several bills have been proposed by Democrats to bring the funding formula back to the pre-cut levels. These ideas have gone down in committee and we still await legislative action which will increase funding for education.
• Special Briefing on Medicaid Expansion
• A special briefing for SD Legislators on Medicaid Expansion was presented by the Council of State Government on Feb. 5. The Council of State Government is a nonpartisan, nonprofit association which serves all three branches of state government-judicial, legislative, and executive. The speaker was Dr. Vern Smith, a nationally known health care economist and the former Medicaid director in Michigan. Dr. Smith was able to relate the experiences of other states, some of which have expanded Medicaid eligibility years before the recent federal proposal. In studies which reviewed these expansions, people were healthier, and less health care was obtained in emergency room, which has resulted in savings for these states.
• The numbers change often, but to date close to half of the states have decided to expand Medicaid coverage. If our state follows suit, the federal government would cover 100 percent of Medicaid costs for the estimated 48,000 newly-eligible SD adults for the first three years (2014 - 2016).  The state's only expense would be a little over a million dollars a year for administration.  The state's share would gradually rise until it reached 10 percent of total costs in 2020.  According to South Dakota Department of Social Services estimates, state residents would receive about $2 trillion in medical care benefits between 2014 and 2020. 

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