Montana
Montana lawmakers hear conflicting arguments on renewing expanded Medicaid program • Daily Montanan
Lawmakers on the health and human services budget committee on Wednesday heard opposing presentations about Medicaid expansion in Montana and its purported benefits and drawbacks as the legislature sets up what will likely be one of its biggest decisions next year – whether it should continue the expanded Medicaid program or let it expire next June.
Under Medicaid expansion, which was created under the Affordable Care Act, able-bodied adults earning up to 138% of the Federal Poverty Level – around $20,782 annually this year for a single person – can get health insurance coverage paid for primarily by the federal government, but partially the state. As of June in Montana, there were around 81,000 people covered under expanded Medicaid out of a total of 228,000 covered by the overall program. Medicaid covers about one-fifth of Montana’s population.
That’s down from a peak of around 302,000 Montanans who were covered in June last year as the state started its unwinding process to boot people off the program who had automatically been re-enrolled during the COVID-19 federal emergency but were no longer eligible after the emergency ended.
Montana first expanded Medicaid here in 2015 and renewed the expansion in 2019. But the expanded portion of the program will expire in June if lawmakers choose not to renew it again during the 2025 legislative session that starts in January and will run for as long as 90 days.
Only 10 states have not expanded Medicaid coverage in the decade they have had the option.
The topic of expansion is sure to bring dozens of lobbyists, health care workers and officials, and people covered by expanded Medicaid to the Capitol to offer their viewpoints on what is currently a $2.4 billion program in Montana overall, with about $100 million annually initially coming out of the state’s General Fund for the expanded coverage. Nearly 80% of the Montana Medicaid budget is paid for with federal funds, and states receive a 90% match for funds for the expanded population.
Wednesday’s presentations offered starkly different viewpoints on the expanded portion. The first came from the data and analytics director of the Foundation for Government Accountability, a right-leaning think tank whose goals include stopping Medicaid expansion, and from the president of Paragon Health Institute, who was a special assistant for economic policy to former President Donald Trump.
The second came from two officials with policy firm Manatt Health, who outlined for lawmakers a report it compiled for the Montana Healthcare Foundation, a private foundation that works on health policy, that showed the benefits of Medicaid expansion in Montana for the past nine years.
Presenters say Medicaid keeping people from working, costing hospitals
The presentations from the former group by Hayden Dublois, the data and analytics director for the Foundation for Government Accountability, and Brian Blase, the president of Paragon, focused primarily on their contention that Medicaid expansion has ballooned the coverage pool beyond what was initially expected, benefited the health care industry over patients, put resources toward able-bodied adults instead of children and people with disabilities, and allowed people who are covered not to work.
Dublois said a public records request he submitted to the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services for information on how many Medicaid recipients in Montana were working between 2019 and 2022. He claimed the data he received showed 54% of recipients in 2019 showed no earned income and that the number had jumped to 72% in 2022. The Manatt presentation would later on claim 66% of recipients were working and another 11% in school.
He said Montana’s slight dip from 23rd healthiest state in the nation in 2015 to 24th healthiest, according to United Health Foundation data, meant that claims that Medicaid helped bolster public health were not true.
And he lamented that Montana hospital profits had decreased after Medicaid expansion due in part to reimbursement rates under expansion and to costs rising during a six-year period despite the state and federal government spending double what it had originally planned to for expansion because more people were eligible than expected.
“Montana’s relative ranking in health outcomes has dropped and the preponderance of the research has shown that in rural areas in particular, outcomes are either nonexistent in terms of improvement or actually result in worsened outcomes than was expected,” Dublois said. “Hospitals are still under financial strain because cost increases outweighed the revenue gains post-expansion. Spending is up and enrollment is up.”
Blase gave a similar presentation, lamenting what he said was an overly costly expansion program that cost other Medicaid recipients quality care and saying there was “no health benefit” associated with Medicaid expansion. He, like Dublois, suggested that the expansion population would be better off getting private insurance or insurance from the ACA marketplace.
“If Montana were to not have Medicaid expansion, the people above 100% of the poverty line, they would move to the exchanges; they would qualify for a very large premium tax credit,” he said. “…So you would have a loss in Medicaid but you would have a significant increase in both private coverage as well as in employer coverage because some of those individuals who are on Medicaid would otherwise be on an employer plan.”
In response to a question from Sen. Carl Glimm, R-Kila, about what population he estimated would fall into that category, Hayden said while he hadn’t looked deeply at data, he believed roughly 20,000 to 30,000 might be eligible for what he called “enhanced private exchange coverage.”
Other group says expanded Medicaid benefitting Montana
The presentation from Manatt Health senior managing director Patti Boozang and senior adviser Zoe Barnard essentially took the opposite stance and highlighted what the two said were vast benefits to Medicaid expansion in Montana and other states during the past decade.
“We’ve had expansion in place for quite a long time now, and there has been a lot of research, a lot of academic studies looking at the impact of Medicaid expansion on coverage, on access, on outcomes,” Boozang told the committee. “And I think the punchline here is that the overwhelming evidence is what Medicaid expansion has had positive effects on all of those measures of success or what we care about in our healthcare system and in our coverage programs.”
She pointed out that spending per Medicaid enrollee in all expansion states is higher for all Medicaid-eligible groups than in non-expansion states, that states have increasingly expanded Medicaid during the past seven years, including seven states by ballot initiative, and that most studies show expansion has positive overall effects for providers, users and states while lowering uncompensated care costs for hospitals.
Barnard told the budget committee that the expanded Medicaid program in Montana has reduced the uninsured rate by 30%, from 16.4% in 2015 to 11.4% in 2022, by filling the gap for people who would not typically qualify for Medicaid or employer-sponsored insurance.
Rep. Mary Caferro, D-Helena, noted that someone working on Montana’s minimum wage would make around $1,000 more annually than the 138% of the Federal Poverty Level and would not qualify even under expansion.
“I know you didn’t ask that, but I thought it might be useful,” she told the committee chair.
Barnard said Medicaid costs in 2023 were $2.4 billion, of which about 79% was funded by the federal government, 13% by the state General Fund, and 8% by special revenue funds. She said Medicaid expansion costs about $100 million a year, but about 25% is paid by hospitals.
But the state has since 2015 spent an average of 13% of the General Fund on Medicaid each year, Barnard said, meaning overall spending has only fluctuated by about $40,000 between 2015 and 2022.
She said expansion has reduced the cost of uncompensated care for Montana hospitals by about $150 million during the course of seven years. And she said Medicaid expansion has increased access to preventative care and behavioral health services.
Discussing the work requirement portion that has been part of the Medicaid expansion discussion in Montana for years, including a Senate bill that was shot down during the 2023 session, Barnard said a University of Montana economist’s analysis showed Medicaid did not decrease the labor force participation and that around 80% of adults receiving Medicaid are working or in school.
U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics data show Montana’s labor force participation rate was about 63.5% in 2015 and is currently around 62.9%. A poll released in early May found nearly three-in-four Montanans supported keeping expanded Medicaid.
“Montanans need to understand that expansion is not a government program keeping people form working,” Barnard said.
About 95 million years ago, a juvenile crocodyliform nicknamed Elton lived in what is now southwest Montana at the edge of the Western Interior Seaway.
Measuring no more than 2 feet long from nose to tip of tail, young Elton was about the size of a big lizard, according to Montana State University professor of paleontology David Varricchio. Had it lived to be full grown, Elton would have measured no longer than 3 feet, far smaller than most members of the Neosuchia clade to which it and its distant relatives belong.
The clade includes modern crocodilians and their closest extinct relatives, almost all of them semiaquatic or marine carnivores with simple, conical teeth.
Elton, by contrast, lived on the land, probably feasting on both plants and insects or small animals with its assortment of differently shaped and specialized teeth. Its unique anatomy reveals that it was part of a new, previously unrecognized family of crocodyliforms endemic to the Cretaceous of North America.
If not for the sharp eye of Harrison Allen, a 2023 graduate of MSU’s Department of Earth Sciences in the College of Letters and Science, Elton’s ancient remains may never have been discovered. But during a dig in the summer of 2021 in the Blackleaf geological formation on U.S. Forest Service land near Dillon, Allen—then a student in Varricchio’s field paleontology course—noticed a fossil the size of the tip of his pinkie with a “weird texture on it.”
“I brought it to Dr. Varricchio and knew it must be something good, because he said, ‘Take me to where you found this,’” said Allen, who is now studying croc paleontology as a doctoral student at Stony Brook University in New York.
It was an exciting moment for Allen, originally from Kentucky, who chose MSU because it offers a paleontology track for undergraduates majoring in earth sciences.
Four years and hundreds of hours of study later, he is the lead author of a paper published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology that describes the morphology and scientific significance of the creature whose remains he found in the Blackleaf Formation.
“After the dig, Dr. Varricchio told me why he was so excited the day I found the initial specimen. It had so much visible anatomy to explore, and he could see it was a tiny, tiny croc skull, fully articulated and preserved—it was a special thing,” Allen said.
“We have found dinosaurs (in the Blackleaf) before, but this was the second known vertebrate animal we’d ever found in this formation.”
The extinct animal, which Allen and the paper’s co-authors later named Thikarisuchus xenodentes for its strange, sheathed teeth, has provided new information about the paleoecology of the Blackleaf ecosystem and about patterns of evolution in the croc family tree.
It also provided the ultimate undergraduate research project for Allen, who delved into the painstaking process of excavating, sifting and reconstructing the Thikarisuchus remains with the help of some fellow students.
“As an undergraduate student new to research, I nervously went up to Dr. Varricchio and asked if I could study this specimen,” Allen said. “It led me down the rabbit hole into this amazing world of prehistoric, extinct crocs and their evolutionary niches.”
The day after Allen recovered the first piece of skeleton, he and his classmates scooped up several bags of sediment from the mound where it was found.
Back in Bozeman, Allen and his friend Dane Johnson, who graduated in 2022 and is now a paleontology lab and field specialist at MSU’s Museum of the Rockies, spent between 10 and 20 hours sifting out fine particulate matter and dirt, eventually recovering dozens of tiny pieces of the Thikarisuchus skeleton that collectively fit into the palm of Allen’s hand.
As they worked, they listened to music, including Elton John’s 1970s hit “Crocodile Rock.” The nickname “Elton” stuck, long before the specimen was assigned the scientific name that reflects its physical traits.
Allen and Johnson recovered bits of bone from almost all areas of the animal’s body, including its limbs, vertebrae, jaw and 50-millimeter-long skull. Because the fragments were tiny and exceptionally fragile, the students didn’t attempt to physically reassemble them.
Instead, they took them for a series of CT scans, including some at MSU’s Subzero Research Laboratory. Allen estimates that he spent well over 100 hours coloring the digital, 2D segment slices that the scans produced, a process necessary to visually distinguish the bones from the rocks they were embedded in.
“Harrison worked super hard to digitally reconstruct the animal, and it came out beautifully,” said Varricchio.
During the process, Allen discovered that the bones of Thikarisuchus were densely concentrated and organized in a manner consistent with fossils of organisms found in burrows in the Blackleaf Formation and the nearby Wayan Formation in Idaho.
He said this suggests that Thikarisuchus was likewise preserved within a burrow, further supporting the notion that fossils recovered from these formations are biased toward those that were preserved in burrows.
The specimen also presented clues about Thikarisuchus’ newly named family group Wannchampsidae and a similar group found in Eurasia known as Atopasauridae.
Both groups were tiny and terrestrially adapted, and they shared certain cranial and dental features found in another more distantly related group from the Cretaceous of Africa and South America.
“It suggests that during the same time period, we’re seeing convergent evolution between two distantly related groups due to similar environmental conditions, prey availability and who-knows-what that prompted crocs on opposite sides of the planet to develop similar features,” Allen said.
As he works toward his Ph.D. and a career as a paleontology professor, Allen said his experiences with Elton cemented his research interest, which has since broadened to include extinct crocs from all over the world.
“The majority of diversity of crocodyliforms is in the past. There were fully marine crocs, fully terrestrial crocs, herbivorous crocs, omnivores and some that cracked shells,” he said. “That amazed me and made me want to get into this more specific realm of paleontology.”
Varricchio said he feels fortunate that students like Allen choose to study at MSU.
“It was a true pleasure to have Harrison as a student here—so much positive enthusiasm, followed up with great research,” he said.
More information:
Harrison J. Allen et al, A new, diminutive, heterodont neosuchian from the Vaughn Member of the Blackleaf Formation (Cenomanian), southwest Montana, and implications for the paleoecology of heterodont neosuchians, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology (2025). DOI: 10.1080/02724634.2025.2542185
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Tiny extinct crocodyliform with unusual teeth discovered in Montana (2025, September 23)
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MISSOULA — The Montana Grizzlies got their revenge on the North Dakota Fighting Hawks with a thrilling 24-23 win Saturday afternoon, and as this team continues to gel, a win like this one is a big step forward.
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‘It’s what you dream about’: No. 5 Montana gelling rapidly after showcase victory
In a game where every yard had to be earned for Montana, the Griz had a hard-fought comeback after trailing by nine points in the fourth quarter.
The victory was set up by a 42-yard field goal by Ty Morrison, which put the Griz within one score of the Fighting Hawks.
Then on their next drive, quarterback Keali’i Ah Yat made the two biggest plays of the game, converting a fourth-and-12 to tight end Josh Gale and finding Brooks Davis wide open in the end zone to take the lead with less than two minutes left in the game.
“It’s what you dream about, it’s what great players are made of,” Ah Yat said. “You play in the backyard and you dream of this stuff, so like, I mean, just grateful for the opportunity. And we had a similar opportunity last year to go ahead and win the game, and I just tried to make the most out of this one.”
Photos: No. 5 Montana surges past No. 16 North Dakota in thriller
Not to be outdone, Montana’s defense also stepped up big in this one, forcing multiple stops throughout while holding North Dakota to 6 for 18 on third down and 0 for 2 on fourth, and only giving up seven points in the second half.
The Griz defense also added an interception by Peyton Wing in the third quarter, which led to a Griz touchdown, bringing a spark to the rest of the team.
It was an impressive showing from a defense that’s just two games into playing with one another.
“I love all our guys and we all spent a lot of time together getting to know each other, and I think that really is what starts to show, especially towards the end of the game,” linebacker Elijawah Tolbert said. “Just the chemistry that we are building week in and week out, I think that is what’s most important and shows.”
Grizzly Replay: No. 5 Montana vs. No. 16 North Dakota
As the team continues to build that chemistry, head coach Bobby Hauck and the Griz saw this win as a key learning experience for the new faces and up-and-coming players who are still figuring out their roles on the field and alongside each other.
“We have inexperience on our team all across the board. We probably are not ready to win a game of that magnitude, but we did,” Hauck said. “I think as we get into the latter part of this season, if we can keep finding ways to win, we’re going to have a terrific football team.”
The Grizzlies now look forward to their next game against Indiana State at Washington-Grizzly Stadium at 1 p.m on Saturday, Sept. 20.
The future of a Montana animal shelter remains uncertain after a cloud of smoke from two pounds of methamphetamine seized by the FBI and incinerated filled up the building and sent workers to the hospital.
The smoke started to fill the building of the nonprofit Yellowstone Valley Animal Shelter in Billings on Wednesday while the FBI used an incinerator at the animal shelter to burn the drugs, city officials said.
Assistant City Administrator Kevin Iffland said Friday that the smoke was sucked in apparently because of negative pressure. A fan was supposed to be on hand in such situations to reverse the pressure so smoke would flow out of the building, but it wasn’t readily available.
The incinerator is used primarily to burn carcasses of animals euthanized or collected by the city’s animal control division. But every couple of months, local law enforcement or FBI agents use it to burn seized narcotics, Iffland said.
Fourteen animal shelter workers were evacuated and went to the hospital. The shelter’s 75 dogs and cats were relocated or put into foster homes, said Iffland and shelter director Triniti Halverson.
The shelter shares space with Billings’ animal control division. When smoke started filling parts of the building, Halverson assumed it was from burning carcasses because she said they had never known about the drug burns.
Halverson said she had a very intense headache and sore throat, and others had dizziness, sweating and coughing.
“Not a party,” she said.
The workers found out it was methamphetamine smoke through a call from a city official while they were in the hospital, Halverson said. Most of the staff spent several hours in an oxygen chamber for treatment.
Symptoms have lingered for some workers, Halverson said.
They were also closely monitoring four litters of kittens that got more heavily exposed because they were in a closed room with lots of smoke, she said.
The FBI routinely uses outside facilities to conduct controlled drug evidence burns, agency spokesperson Sandra Barker said. She referred further questions to Billings officials.
A city animal control supervisor who was present for Wednesday’s burn declined to go to the hospital, Iffland said. The FBI agents were told to go to the hospital by their supervisor.
The incinerator is meant to operate at a certain temperature, so it doesn’t emit toxins. Iffland said officials were trying to determine if it was at the appropriate temperature on Wednesday.
The shelter will remain closed until it can be tested for contamination. Shelter workers were tested for potential exposure, and Iffland said he did not know the results.
“We have no idea of how much we’ve lost,” shelter board member and attorney Frans Andersson told CBS affiliate KTVQ. “We don’t have inventory at the moment of what was in there.”
The company hired to assess and clean up the building told the station that they are doing air quality tests before any remediation can happen.
“This is a unique situation and project,” said Andrew Newman, owner and CEO of Newman Restoration. “Typically, what we’ll see is more on the residential side with, you know, kind of a meth lab that either caused a fire or triggered some type of needing remediation. With this being a larger commercial facility and what the intentions were, it makes it a unique situation and cleanup.”
Newman expects the lab results to come back by next week.
Billings resident Jay Ettlemen went to the shelter on Friday to donate dog food and said he was angry when he found out about the drug burns.
“Why the hell are they destroying drugs inside the city limits?” Ettlemen asked. “There’s so many other places in the middle of nowhere.”
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