Idaho’s Medicaid expansion option dead for the year

House lawmakers have killed the proposal to expand Medicaid in Idaho on the final day of the 2016 legislative session.

Lawmakers rejected the newly amended proposal sent over from the Senate on a party-line vote on Friday.

An estimated 78,000 Idahoans are currently without health coverage because they either don’t qualify for Medicaid, the health care program designed to cover the poor, or make too much for a subsidy.

A last-minute bill was stitched together by Senate lawmakers on Thursday after they completely revamped a minor House bill that would have only allocated more funding for studying the so-called Medicaid gap population. However, the complete transformation was too much of an uphill battle for the Republicans to stomach in the House.