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Gov. Rick Scott told agency heads to prepare for the worst Thursday, asking them to list only the state's most critical needs in the event the Legislature can't reach an agreement on a budget that doesn't expand health care to the poor. Scott sent the letter to agency heads the day after lawmakers said they were making progress on a budget impasse that they'll seek to resolve in a special session beginning June 1. (Farrington, 5/14)

In some more Scott-speak not likely to endear him to Republican senators, Scott refers in his agency memos that he's building a budget without "controversial and divisive issues like Medicaid expansion or using Florida tax dollars to fund the federal low-income pool program." Both programs are Senate priorities, though Senate GOP leaders deny that their limited expansion of health care to the uninsured is an expansion of Medicaid. Scott's memorandum says the lists of critical service needs are needed because "it is possible that Florida Senate President Andy Gardiner and the Florida Senate will not agree to any budget without the specific expansion of Medicaid at a cost to state taxpayers of $5 billion over 10 years." (Bousquet, 5/14)

House Finance Committee co-chair Steve Thompson said Thursday that the panel is not comfortable moving ahead with plans to expand Medicaid coverage in Alaska at this time. The decision deals a blow to Gov. Bill Walker, who campaigned on expansion and made it a priority of his administration. It follows days of committee hearings that focused little on the bill and more on issues surrounding the Medicaid program, including a provider payment system plagued by bugs following its 2013 launch but has improved significantly, state health officials said. (Bohrer, 5/14)

After spending most of the last three days fretting over the failure of the Medicaid provider payment system that was installed in 2013, the House Finance Committee pulled the plug on Gov. Bill Walker’s Medicaid expansion bill Thursday. In a four-minute prepared statement, Fairbanks Republican Rep. Steve Thompson, the committee’s co-chair, said the committee will not hold any further meetings on House Bill 148 because the preceding days had “made it clear that Medicaid is a bigger problem than we knew.” (Buxton, 5/14)

While legislators remain deadlocked on budget negotiations, debate continues on another topic of Gov. Bill Walker's special session call: Medicaid expansion. Republican legislative leaders appear unwilling to back down on the issue of expansion -- one of Walker's campaign promises -- as demonstrated by legislative action and inaction this week. The action comes in the House of Representatives, where after a week of contentious hearings, the Republican-led Finance Committee announced Thursday it would not be moving forward with the expansion proposal. (Forgey, 5/14)

[House Majority Leader Jim] Dunnigan traveled to Washington, D.C., two weeks ago with Gov. Gary Herbert, Senate President Wayne Niederhauser, House Speaker Greg Hughes and the sponsor of the Senate's Medicaid expansion bill, Sen. Brian Shiozawa, to meet with Obama administration officials on Utah's options. That group, and Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox, promised on the last day of the legislative session to come up with an acceptable compromise to dueling Senate and House Medicaid bills — Healthy Utah and Utah Cares, respectively — by the end of July. Dunnigan conceded that deadline is ambitious, but said Thursday he still believes it's doable. The idea is the full Legislature would be called into special session to consider the plan. Herbert, speaking at his monthly KUED news conference, said he, too, thinks the six are on track to make the end-of-July deadline. (Moulton, 5/14)

As state leaders continue to grapple with Medicaid expansion, Gov. Gary Herbert says they're on track to have a plan in place this summer, but other lawmakers are indicating the possibility of continued delay. House Majority Leader Jim Dunnigan, R-Taylorsville, a member of the legislative group assembled by the governor to have a plan for Medicaid ready by the end of July, suggested Thursday there's still a chance Utahns may need to keep waiting due to ongoing uncertainty with the federal government. “Certainly not now is still an option," Dunnigan said following a panel discussion on Medicaid expansion at the Capitol. "But that's not my goal. My goal is to find a solution." (McKellar, 5/15)

The state’s main health agency says it’s analyzing a new plan to cover more uninsured Georgians through a special Medicaid “waiver’’ program. Gov. Nathan Deal “has asked us to work on it,’’ Clyde Reese, commissioner of the state Department of Community Health, said Thursday. The plan for a Medicaid waiver was generated by Grady Health System as an alternative to Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, a step that has been firmly rejected by Deal and state legislative leaders. (Miller, 5/14)