Kansas Governor Ensures His State Won't Expand Medicaid Anytime Soon: Live from The Roasterie CLXX: May 8, 2014
Tara Culp-Ressler: Kansas Governor Sam Brownback Ensures His State Won't Expand Medicaid Anytime Soon: "Thanks to a new bill approved by Gov. Sam Brownback (R)...
...Kansas definitely won’t be expanding its Medicaid program this year.... Brownback signed House Bill 2552, which removes his authority to accept Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion and requires the legislature to approve the policy. Since lawmakers have already concluded their session for the year, that means the state won’t be able to move on Medicaid expansion in 2014. And even if a Democratic governor is elected in the fall, the Republicans in the legislature could continue to block expansion....
Anti-Obamacare lawmakers have dug in their heels against it:
It doesn’t take a position on whether or not Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act should take place in Kansas. But what it does say is it should be up to the people’s elected representatives to make that decision...
Rep. John Rubin (R), one of the primary supporters of the legislation, told the Wichita Eagle....
Now that Obamacare is fully in effect, and millions of people are gaining coverage under the law, Republican lawmakers have been more hesitant to publicly acknowledge their opposition to expanding Medicaid.... Kansas isn’t alone. Over 20 GOP-led states have refused to expand Medicaid, leaving about six million of the poorest Americans without any access to affordable health care whatsoever. The people who live in those states are already disproportionately poorer and sicker than the people living in the states that are accepting the expansion. The ongoing resistance to this Obamacare provision threatens to widen those regional disparities even further...
