Next up for Medicaid Expansion: Utah, Wyoming and...Alabama???

I've posted a few times before about the ACA Medicaid expansion situation in some deep red states; Tennessee, Utah and Wyoming among them:

Two of the most heavily Republican states, Utah and Wyoming, appear to be moving closer to an expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Other GOP-dominated states, like Indiana and Tennessee, are also looking more closely at it, despite the hostility of their party’s leaders toward Obamacare.

...Gov. Matt Mead of Wyoming, where Republicans hold 78 of 90 seats in the legislature, acknowledged his opposition to Obamacare but said the statehad to be realistic by embracing Medicaid expansion in one form or another. “I don’t think we can say to those people in Wyoming who are working [and] who cannot get insurance that we’re not going to do anything,” he said.

...While the odds for expansion in Wyoming remain uncertain, Utah seems likely to move in the coming months. There, Gov. Gary Herbert made the case on moral grounds — as a duty to help people he described as “our neighbors, our friends and our family members.”

Today it appears that an even more unlikely state may be breaking...Alabama:

Gov. Robert Bentley cracked the door open on the expansion of Medicaid, allowing new lawmakers to speculate the governor was mulling asking the federal government for a block grant to expand the federal health insurance program for the poor and disabled.

It was an interesting trial balloon floated by Bentley when most of his speech was focused on the hard choices the lawmakers will have to make on other issues -- mainly the budget.