Speaker of the Kansas House, Dan Hawkins, visited Plainville this [April 11] to reveal the “truth” of Medicaid expansion. Either his presentation was outdated, or he was not truthful. Either way, Hawkins’ presentation proved he cannot speak the truth.
Hawkins claims over 150,000 able-bodied adults “who are not working” will receive taxpayer-financed health care if Medicaid expansion becomes law. Able-bodied adults should just “get a job” that either provides health care benefits or enough wages to purchase a subsidized plan on the federal insurance market.
However, there are not 150,000 able-bodied adults “not working” in Kansas. The current unemployment rate is 2.7%. Kansas is home to just under 2.9 million people. Subtract children, retirees and the disabled from that number, and you’ll arrive at about 1.9 million able-bodied adults. Multiply 1.9 million by 0.027. You get 51,300 unemployed. The unemployed have access to COBRA if they lose their job or are already on Medicaid if their COBRA extension has run out.
This means Hawkins stood in front of about 100 people and used faulty information or directly lied. I prefer to be generous and assume he used old information. Either way, I would expect the Speaker of the Kansas House to have heard Kari Bruffett’s testimony in favor of Medicaid expansion during the March 20 hearings. Bruffett, the CEO of the nonpartisan Kansas Health Institute, testified about 40,000 children and 110,000 adults would receive health insurance through Medicaid expansion. Only 20,000 of those adults are “not working.” Further testimony in the hearing revealed these adults cannot work because they did not receive consistent treatment for varying ailments like cancer. They literally are not healthy enough, but could have been, had they been on Medicaid.
Why would Hawkins continue to oppose Medicaid expansion if the target population is working? I believe he has a conflict of interest. Hawkins sells health insurance to employers for the Conrade Group in Wichita. According to a study by KU, Kansas health insurance premiums went up 77% between 2012 and 2020, whereas states that have expanded Medicaid only saw an increase of 25%. Frankly, Medicaid expansion could decrease the yearly growth in Kansas’ health insurance premiums.
I’m not saying a decrease in your premium will happen if Medicaid expansion is passed. Nor am I saying that increases will go away. I simply saying the increases will most likely not be as much after a few years. Being an insurance salesman, Hawkins no doubt knows this. However, he probably does not want his lucrative health insurance business to make less money than it does now. Either that, or he really does not care that the “truth” of Medicaid expansion is that Governor Kelly’s legislation would employ more people, help hospitals and decrease Kansans’ health care costs.
— Mark Schaukowitch of Plainville
Sources Cited:
1. Kari Bruffett, Cutting Healthcare Costs for All Kansans Act: Hearings on HR 2556, March 20, 2024, https://www.kslegislature.org/li/b2023_24/committees/ctte_h_hhs_1/documents/testimony/20240320_22.pdf
2. Davut Ayan et al. “Economic Costs to Kansas Due to State’s Failure to Expand Medicaid,” REACH Foundation, May 2022, https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/handle/1808/32851