Tag: Medicaid expansion

Rep. Davids backs federal strategy for Medicaid expansion in Kansas

U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, right, spoke Wednesday in favor of a federal strategy to expand Medicaid, at the Community Health Council of Wyandotte County. (Photo from Rep. Davids’ staff)

U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, D-3rd Dist., said on Wednesday that she would support a new federal strategy to expand Medicaid in states including Kansas, where legislatures have repeatedly blocked it.

Rep. Davids called for the upcoming budget reconciliation package to both continue current expansion incentives and include a federal plan to expand Medicaid coverage. In a news conference in Kansas City, Kansas, Rep. Davids was joined by local advocates and health care professionals who have seen the need to expand Medicaid here.

Rep. Davids successfully fought to include increased financial incentives for Medicaid expansion in the American Rescue Plan, which became law in March of this year. Under those incentives, Medicaid expansion in Kansas would be completely paid for through the first two years, after which the federal government would continue to cover 90% of the cost.

Despite this, Kansas remains one of only 12 states that have chosen not to expand Medicaid, leaving 165,000 Kansans without access to affordable health care. Rep.Davids renewed her call for a new, federal strategy to step in and close the coverage gap in those 12 non-expansion states.

“During this time of uncertainty, no Kansan should have to worry about whether they will receive the care that they and their families need to stay healthy,” Rep. Davids said. “That’s why I’m fighting to continue the financial incentives that make it essentially free for Kansas to expand Medicaid, and to explore a federal option that would close the coverage gap even if the legislature continues to block expansion. Kansans have made their voices clear on this, and it’s time to act.”

“Medicaid expansion isn’t an abstract policy discussion. We currently have patients who refuse additional services because they can’t afford them—but with Medicaid, they could. It would have a huge impact on our patients and on our community as a whole,” said Patrick Sallee, president and CEO of Vibrant Health. “Plus, research shows that when people have insurance, they use it. I’m glad that Rep. Davids is exploring every avenue to make affordable health care available to more Kansans.”

“The majority of Kansans support Medicaid expansion but the issue has been bogged down by politics in Topeka,” said April Holman, executive director of Alliance for a Healthy Kansas. “The federal approach to closing the coverage gap will provide long-awaited relief to Kansas consumers, providers, and communities.”

One option to cover the more than 4 million Americans left vulnerable by states’ inaction is the Medicaid Saves Lives Act. This Davids-backed legislation would create a federal Medicaid-style program to extend coverage eligibility to all individuals under 138% of the federal poverty level, establishing a permanent solution for the failure of non-expansion states like Kansas to extend the program. As Congress already paid for Medicaid expansion in the Affordable Care Act, this federal Medicaid program should require no additional offsets, according to a spokesman.

Research confirms that Medicaid expansion increases access to care, improves financial security, and leads to better health outcomes, and failure to expand Medicaid disproportionately affects people of color, as 60% of people in the coverage gap are Black, Hispanic, Asian, or Pacific Islander. Additionally, a recent report found that Kansas could increase its economic output by $17 billion and add an estimated 23,000 new jobs if the state chose to expand Medicaid.

  • Information from Rep. Davids’ office

200 rally at Statehouse for Medicaid expansion

by Jim McLean, KHI News Service 

Topeka— Medicaid expansion is nowhere to be found on Gov. Sam Brownback’s list of priorities and those of Republican legislative leaders as they work through a legislative session now dominated by school finance issues.

But that didn’t stop nearly 200 expansion supporters from crowding into a wing of the Statehouse adjacent to the governor’s office on Tuesday for a noisy rally. The event was staged by more than 50 health care and social service organizations organized under the banner of the Kansas Medicaid Access Coalition.

Sean Gatewood, a former Democratic legislator from Topeka and director of the coalition, outlined the case for expansion by reminding the crowd that the state’s current Medicaid program is one of the most restrictive in the nation.

“If you don’t have kids and you don’t have a disability and you’re just a childless adult there is no Medicaid for you. It doesn’t matter if you don’t make a dime,” Gatewood said.

In Kansas, childless adults are not eligible for Medicaid no matter how poor they are. Adults with children are eligible but only if they earn less than 32 percent of poverty, about $630 a month for a three-person household.

The federal health reform law allows states to increase Medicaid eligibility for all adults with annual earnings up to 138 percent of poverty – $15,856 for individuals and $35,325 for a family of four. And the law requires the federal government to pay 100 percent of the costs for three years. After that, the federal share gradually declines until it reaches 90 percent.

Without expansion, an estimated 80,000 uninsured Kansans are expected to fall into what is being called the Medicaid gap. They are ineligible for the existing Medicaid program but are too poor to qualify for federal subsidies to help cover the cost of private coverage in the Obamacare marketplace.

Georgia Masterson traveled from Iola to attend the rally and lobby legislators from her area. A former state employee, Masterson now helps people select health coverage on the healthcare.gov website as a certified navigator. She said she’s counseled several people who made too little to qualify for federal subsidies and too much for Medicaid.

“It’s very frustrating and it’s very heartbreaking,” Masterson said.

Many of those expected to end up in the gap are seniors who lost their jobs and health insurance before they were old enough to qualify for Medicare, said Mary Tritsch of AARP Kansas.

“They’re not eligible to be on Medicare until they’re 65 so they’re caught in a gap and they really need this,” Tritsch said. “We’re estimating that a little over 20,000 Kansans are in that position.”

The rejection of Medicaid expansion is also squeezing Kansas hospitals financially. They’re being forced to absorb cuts in Medicare reimbursements that were supposed to be offset by higher Medicaid spending.

A report from the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured estimated that rejecting expansion would cost Kansas $5.3 billion in federal aid between 2013 and 2022.

By Tuesday evening, a ticker on the Kansas Health Consumer website that continuously updates how much money Kansas has lost since Jan. 1 was closing in on $83 million.

None of the arguments advanced by expansion supporters have carried the day with opponents. Just last week, Brownback restated his opposition to expansion, saying it would be wrong to allow more able-bodied adults into Medicaid when thousands of people with physical and developmental disabilities are still on waiting lists for services.

“I want us (first) to take care of the people who are on the waiting lists now,” Brownback said after addressing an event organized by mental health advocates.

A Medicaid expansion bill introduced early in the session by Rep. Jim Ward, a Wichita Democrat, never received a hearing and remains bottled up in a House committee.

Senate President Susan Wagle, a Wichita Republican, has said she is open to discussing the kind of private-sector approaches to expansion being taken in other states by GOP governors. Those plans require federal approval to use Medicaid money to subsidize the purchase of private coverage.

“I believe if the federal government would give us the flexibility then we could arrive at a plan that works for Kansas,” Wagle said.

Wagle said continued opposition to the Affordable Care Act and problems with its implementation made it impossible to discussed the related Medicaid expansion issue this session.

“We don’t have a predictable environment to legislate from,” she said.

Jacki Chase is the head nurse for the Iola school district and the daughter of the late Robert Talkington, the president of the Kansas Senate from 1985-1989. She said she supports Medicaid expansion but understands why some legislators don’t want to deal with it in an election year.

“It is a politically charged issue that relates back to the Affordable Care Act and whether that is going to be successful,” Chase said. “I think they don’t want to address it and possibly have it used against them in this year’s election.”

In 2010, political organizations spending hundreds of thousands of dollars used the Obamacare issue to defeat several moderate Republican members of the Kansas Senate.

The KHI News Service is an editorially independent initiative of the Kansas Health Institute. It is supported in part by a variety of underwriters. The News Service is committed to timely, objective and in-depth coverage of health issues and the policy-making environment. More about the News Service is at khi.org/news or contact 785-233-5443.

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