Medicaid expansion — a proposal which narrowly failed in the Montana Legislature earlier this year — is back on the front burner in Helena.

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate John Bohlinger is calling on Gov. Steve Bullock to convene a special legislative session to expand Medicaid to another 70,000 residents, the same proposal that was rejected by lawmakers during the regular session.

Meanwhile, a group calling itself the Healthy Montana Initiative will file a ballot initiative with the Montana Secretary of State’s Office today to achieve the same goal.

After filing the ballot language, the Healthy Montana Initiative plans to hold a press conference at noon outside of the secretary of state’s office in the State Capitol. The Healthy Montana Initiative says that it is made up of health-care providers, small businesses, veterans, and other advocates of health-care reform.

Bohlinger, the former Republican lieutenant governor who served with Gov. Brian Schweitzer, said Wednesday in a news conference that uninsured Montanans also should have the option to access state health clinics for public employees.

With 190,000 people in the state uninsured, and few Montanans so far able to sign up for health insurance through the new federal exchange website, Bohlinger offered to volunteer his assistance in expanding the Medicaid rolls.

“It’s such an important issue and such a significant concern. I think it’s a crisis today,” Bohlinger said. “Sure, we can wait until 2015 when the Legislature assembles, and let them deal with the problem. But it’s far too great an issue to just put it on the backburner and let it just cook.”

Bullock supports Medicaid expansion, but the Democratic governor has said he doesn’t plan to call a special session “any time soon” to expand Medicaid because Republican leaders oppose it.

“Mr. Bohlinger’s a dedicated public servant, but I’m disappointed that rather than engaging in a serious discussion he’s looking for an easy headline on a complicated issue.  If he’s serious about how to expand coverage for 70,000 working poor and create 13,000 new jobs, he’d pick up the phone and ask the governor how he could help,” Bullock spokesman Kevin O’Brien said in a statement Wednesday.

Earlier this year, the Legislature rejected a similar proposal to expand Medicaid to include the working poor earning less than 138 percent of the poverty level.

Senate President Jeff Essmann, R-Billings, said the same result is likely if the Legislature meets again.

The nation’s new health-care law and a Medicaid expansion would mean higher insurance premiums and higher taxes, he said.

“I think the more Obamacare rolls out, I think the more that the average Montanan and American is figuring out that the middle class is going to get stuck with a big bill for this,” Essmann said.

Bohlinger also proposed allowing uninsured Montanans to buy into the state employee health plan and access state health clinics in Helena, Billings and Miles City, along with another planned for the Butte area.

Bohlinger said that would provide Montana consumers a fourth option in addition to the three insurers selling plans through the Montana exchange. He was unsure what it would cost residents or how long it would take to create that option.

Bohlinger, who was former Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s lieutenant governor until January, faces John Walsh, Bullock’s current lieutenant governor, in the 2014 Democratic primary in the campaign to succeed retiring U.S. Sen. Max Baucus.

Walsh’s campaign did not have any comment on Bohlinger’s proposals.