Views
Opinion column
by Murrel Bland
There is an old saying that goes something like this:
“Those who like legislation and sausage would do well not to see either of them being made.”
That certainly proved true during the recent session of the Kansas Legislature. And that process proved very disappointing to State Rep. Kathy Wolfe Moore (D-36th Dist.) of western Wyandotte County. She explained her severe frustration at a meeting of the Legislative Committee Friday, May 10, at the Chamber of Commerce office.
Rep. Moore was particularly upset that the proposed Medicaid expansion bill failed to pass. It was even more disgusting to Rep. Moore to see the way that conservative Republican leadership twisted arms to kill the measure.
Rep. Moore knows firsthand how important expanded Medicaid could be to the 150,000 Kansans who do not have any health insurance coverage. She works for the University of Kansas Health System.
At one time, there were 70 members of the Kansas House and 24 members of the Kansas Senate who favored the expanded Medicaid. This was a coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats.
But in final days of the legislative session, Rep. Moore said she saw the conservative leadership pick off Medicaid proponents, even though polls and Kansas hospitals overwhelmingly favored the expansion. The bill, which would have been funded 90 percent by the federal government, would have been particularly helpful for uninsured residents of Wyandotte County.
Rep. Moore said that State Sen. Jim Denning (R- Eighth Dist.) of Overland Park has said he will sponsor a bill next year that will be a version of such an expansion, suggesting that there needs to be a “work provision” in the law. She said that sounds good — that a person needs to work to receive the benefits. However, she said that in other states enforcing that work provision proved too costly.
Another discouraging aspect of this legislative session was that it ended at 3:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning.
Murrel Bland is the former editor of The Wyandotte West and The Piper Press. He is the executive director of Business West.