With no news thus far on the fate of legislation designed to provide coverage for the 78,000 Idahoans who now fall into a coverage gap, as they earn too much to qualify for the state’s limited Medicaid program but too little to qualify for subsidized insurance through the state insurance exchange – 54,000 such Idahoans have applied for coverage through the exchange and been turned away because they don’t make enough money – the Idaho Statesman reports today that  “opponents of federal funding for such programs have unsheathed their long knives, hoping to skewer the plan.”

Writes Statesman reporter Bill Dentzer, “At the same time, changes to the bill and heartburn over it within the Republican caucus make it equally possible the proposal could die from a thousand cuts before the Legislature adjourns this week, perhaps as early as Wednesday. Republican lawmakers were tight-lipped Monday in discussing the bill – which is to say, they wouldn’t. Not so the Idaho Freedom Foundation, which went into its full court press to stop the bill.” Dentzer has an article here fact-checking the Freedom Foundation’s attacks on the bill, which he reports, in detail, are “a little off.”