BY: RACHEL MIPRO, Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — Kansas lawmakers, health care advocates and lobbyists lined the walls of a jam-packed room Wednesday to give their views on Medicaid expansion, their first opportunity to do so in years.
(Click below to watch the hearing)
It’s been four years since legislative leaders have allowed hearings on expanding state health care coverage for Kansans who can’t afford to buy marketplace health insurance.
The joint Senate committee informational hearing on what this extended eligibility would look like is one of two Medicaid expansion hearings scheduled Wednesday. Sen. Beverly Gossage, a Eudora Republican, said the current state health insurance plan should not be changed.
“For multiple reasons, I urge my fellow legislators to vote against Medicaid expansion,” Gossage wrote in submitted testimony. “Kansas is wise to preserve limited Medicaid funds for the truly vulnerable for whom Medicaid was originally designed. And not to displace people from their private plans onto a government program that will stretch the state budget and withhold funds from other vital projects.”
Kansas is one of 10 states left that have not expanded, as Republican leadership in the Legislature — where the party holds a supermajority in both chambers — has withheld approval despite widespread public support for expansion.
Under the Affordable Care Act, the federal government covers 90% of the extra cost of Medicaid services in exchange for expanding eligibility to 138% of the federal poverty rate. Medicaid expansion would unlock $700 million in annual federal funding and could potentially save 59 rural hospitals on the brink of closure.
Among the conservative national lobbying groups that voiced opposition to expansion were Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute and Opportunity Solutions Project.
Dean Clancy, senior health policy fellow with Americans for Prosperity, said expansion would take away funds from “truly needy patients.”
“Every Medicaid dollar that the state spends on able-bodied adults is one less dollar it can spend on individuals with disabilities, pregnant mothers, and children in poverty,” Clancy said. “States that expand Medicaid have fewer resources to treat truly needy patients.”
Most of the estimated 150,000 Kansans who would benefit from expansion are low-income workers or those suffering from chronic illness.
Christine Osterlund, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment’s deputy secretary and the state’s Medicaid director, said increasing access to affordable health care would result in more Kansans receiving preventative health care, addressing health issues before they worsen and result in hospitalization or emergency room visits.
“Expansion states show more mothers accessing services, including postpartum care, than in non-expansion states, and children with parents enrolled in Medicaid are more likely to receive health care services,” Osterlund said. “Eligible individuals with behavioral health conditions see increased access to behavioral health treatment and other services under Medicaid expansion.”
Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly has spent months rallying across the state for expansion, leveraging 2024’s election year status to jolt Kansas lawmakers into action before they face their constituents in fall.
Democrats introduced Medicaid expansion bills into House and Senate committees in January, waiting weeks for action. The House will hear the Medicaid expansion bill, encapsulated as House Bill 2556, later this afternoon.