Much discussion here and elsewhere about the survival chances of the private option Medicaid expansion financed by Obamacare with a Republican electoral surge that includes many winners who ran as ardent foes of Obamacare and the private option.

A reminder of the Dumas Option. Times columnist Ernest Dumas, who has a half-century experience covering the Capitol, has written often — as here — that there is a solid legal argument, if unprecedented in use, to continue the private option on a simple majority vote of the legislature. Don’t appropriations take 75 percent votes? They do. But, for now, NO state dollars are spent on the private option so a state appropriation isn’t really necessary, even if it has been a matter of past practice.  Dumas also outlines an argument that NO vote is needed at all.

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The Dumas Option. It wasn’t considered during the last two hair-breadth approvals of the legislation. The next go-round, it might be the only way.

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