Top Pa. GOP Senator Plans Medicaid Vote

By Tony Romeo

HARRISBURG, Pa. (CBS) - It appears there will be a vote in the Pennsylvania Senate next week – one way or another – on expanding Medicaid as part of the federal health care law.

Democrats in the legislature have vowed to try to force a vote on the expansion of Medicaid, something that Governor Corbett continues to resist. But some Republicans support it, too, and now the Associated Press reports that top Republican in the GOP-controlled Senate, President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, says Republicans plan to draft a bill that would expand Medicaid with "reasonable conditions".

Erik Arneson, the spokesman for the number two Republican Senator, Dominic Pileggi of Chester, says, "It's no secret that we've been – everybody has been looking at and working on this issue for a long time. So I wouldn't be surprised for it to come to a head through any number of different ways."

Arneson says, for example, there could also be an attempt to amend Medicaid expansion into the package of budget bills that will be voted.