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Utah will still not be allowed to require Medicaid recipients to work, even though the president has offered Utah Gov. Gary Herbert more flexibility on the issue, federal officials said Wednesday. U.S. Health and Human Services Department spokesman Ben Wakana said “encouraging work is a legitimate state objective” and the agency looks forward to continuing negotiations with Herbert over Medicaid expansion. (Price, 1/7)

Incoming Gov. Asa Hutchinson says he wants to take a broader look at Arkansas' role in health care that goes beyond whether the state should continue its compromise Medicaid expansion. The Republican governor-elect said Wednesday he wants to look at the state's role in delivering health care services. Hutchinson, who takes office on Tuesday, has said he'll deliver a "major speech" later this month about the future of the private option and health care reform. (DeMillo, 1/7)

As more Republican-led states accept Medicaid expansion or consider expanding the program to extend health coverage to the low-income uninsured, a report released Wednesday recommends that Texas do the same. The report by the Code Red Task Force on Access to Health Care in Texas says doing so would not only cover an estimated 1 million residents but also prevent billions of dollars in federal taxes paid by Texans from going to other states to fund their programs. The task force, made up of health care providers, researchers, business leaders and advisers from across the state, also proposes development of more organized local and regional health care and creation of more medical residency programs to expand the state’s health care workforce to improve patient care and to keep people healthier. (Hines, 1/7)

It says something about the long odds for Medicaid expansion in Texas that the incoming governor’s mere request for information recently made advocates swoon. Obamacare supporters on the national level started speculating that Texas was on the way to joining the ranks of Republican-controlled expansion states. But Greg Abbott’s informal inquiry about an alternative proposal in Utah, reported by the Houston Chronicle, is at best a tiny step in that direction. (Wheaton, 1/7)

Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear says hospital Medicaid revenues have jumped $450 million while Kentucky has added more than 5,000 new health services jobs during the first year of the state's embrace of the federal Affordable Care Act. Beshear touted those numbers in prepared text of his final State of the Commonwealth address as evidence the state will be able to pay for the nearly half-million new people who now have government-funded health insurance through the state's expanded Medicaid program. (1/7)

Patients and health advocates will rally across Florida to urge Gov. Rick Scott and lawmakers to expand Medicaid to nearly 1 million residents. Thursday's rally is slated to take place in Miami, Tallahassee, Tampa and Orlando and will include a coalition of nearly 100 organizations. They want lawmakers to accept roughly $50 billion from the federal government over the next decade to offer health coverage to residents who are too poor to qualify for tax credits in the marketplace, yet earn too much to qualify for Medicaid. (1/8)