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ple considered too poor to get the subsidized insurance.
• South Dakota's Medicaid program now covers about 116,000 children, adults and disabled people. The expanded eligibility would add an estimated 48,000 people, mostly adults without children.
• People earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level -- $15,451 for a single person or $31,809 for a family of four -- would be covered by an expansion. The federal government would fully cover those added to Medicaid's rolls through 2016, and the state's contribution would rise in stages to 10 percent of the medical costs by 2020.
• Federal officials earlier rejected Daugaard's request that South Dakota be allowed to expand Medicaid eligibility only up to 100 percent of the poverty level because those over that mark can qualify for subsidized private insurance. He has said he likely will renew that request.
• Senate Republican Leader Tim Rave of Baltic said he doubts the 2014 Legislature will agree to an expansion covering all the 48,000, but lawmakers would be open to accept a federal waiver that would expand Medicaid to cover some of those people.
• "Certainly, everyone wants to do the right thing for the people who need assistance," Rave said. "We also are reluctant to jump at first into something that we may not be able to pay for going forward."
• Brechtelsbauer, the advocate for low-income people, said many disabled people of modest incomes are not getting help with their medical bills. That's because they can't get coverage from Medicare, the program mostly for retired people, until two years after they start receiving Social Security disability benefits, she said.
• Jessie Currie, 57, of Sioux Falls, wants to see Medicaid expanded because her medical bills have piled up since she hurt her back in 2009 and became unable to work. She won't start getting Medicare disability coverage until next November.
• "Now I'm just trying to make it," Currie said.
• The South Dakota State Medical Association and the South Dakota Association of Healthcare Organization support expanding Medicaid.
• Dave Hewett, president of the Association of Healthcare Organizations, said hospitals and nursing homes will continue to urge the Legislature to expand Medicaid. An expansion would hold down private insurance costs because hospitals would not have to charge other patients as much to cover losses for free care given to low-income people, he said.
• Hospitals nationwide have already taken a cut in Medicare reimbursements to help the federal government pay for the health care overhaul, he said.
• Hewett said supporters of expanding Medicaid know they face an uphill battle in

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