http://www.vox.com/2017/2/1/14475974/obamacare-medicaid-block-grants

GOP legislator: Block-granting Medicaid will be “harder” than I thought

Yesterday afternoon, I interviewed Rep. Phil Roe (R-TN), a conservative legislator who co-chairs the GOP Doctors Caucus and authored the Republican Study Committee’s Obamacare replacement plan. We spent most of the time talking about that health care bill, and you can read that full conversation here.

But one of the things Roe told me that surprised me the most was that he has begun to think block-granting Medicaid is going to be much harder than he initially expected. Here was the full answer:

What I thought was going to be easy was I thought Medicaid, we’d just block-grant it to the states. That one actually is going to be a little harder than I thought. The reason is there are states like New York, states that expanded [Medicaid]. How do you cover that 10 or so million people on Medicaid?

Why this is surprising: There is a lot that divides Republicans on health policy right now (what exactly to do about the Affordable Care Act, for example). But if there is one major idea that unites them, it is block grants for Medicaid.