Republican governor, Jim Gibbons initiated a step towards the rejection of the policy of federal Medicaid program that covers health care plans for poor, disabled and senior citizens of Nevada.

$636 billion funds will be required to extend Medicaid from 2014 to 2019 when subsidy for the health care bill will expire completely.

Stacy Woodbury, Gibbons' deputy chief of staff, suggested that instead of investing on Medicaid the state will provide federal subsidies to the poor for getting private insurance. $868 billion fund of the state that would have been used for Medicaid, for the next two years, would be now used for health care premiums for the elderly, blind and disabled.

Health care advocates and Democrats had opposed Gibbon's plan.

A spokesman for U. S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, the guide for the health care bill through the Senate, said Gibbons is ignoring the ramifications of pulling out of Medicaid.

If state's participation comes to an end in the Medicaid program then hospitals receiving funds for treating poor people would not receive such funds in future, as this Medicaid program is dependent on state's participation.

Till now $868 million had been paid by the state for $2.9 billion Plan of Nevada's Medicaid which will end on June 30, 2011.