Montana’s I-185 Defeated
Montana voters rejected Initiative 185 (I-185), a $74 million tobacco tax increase that would have permanently expanded Medicaid.
When Montana lawmakers passed Medicaid expansion in 2015, they included a sunset provision in the law to make sure they could evaluate the program’s effectiveness and control costs and spending. But I-185 would have locked the massive government program in place, bypassing the Legislature and making permanent a program that was designed to be re-evaluated. By eliminating the sunset and making the program permanent, taxpayers would be obligated to spend tens of millions of dollars more without the oversight promised when this program was first created.