Barbara Shelly: It’s a journey to expand Medicaid in Kansas

The best that can be said of expanding Medicaid eligibility in Kansas is that it’s a journey.

At a well-attended forum on Tuesday at Johnson County Community College, Sen. Jeff King, R-Indepen- dence, predicted that expansion was at least 16 months away.

“It’s not going to be short. It’s not going to be easy. It may not be this year,” King said.

He’s right about the long and difficult part. Kansas already has stalled so long it has passed the three-year window in which the federal government would pay the full cost of the expansion.

About 150,000 people in Kansas are believed to be uninsured because of the state’s failure to increase Medicaid eligibility to the threshold called for in the federal Affordable Care Act.

But King’s presence and posture at the event – sponsored by local chambers of commerce, hospitals and businesses – signified a sort of progress. The senator is conservative on most issues and used to avidly oppose expanding Medicaid.

But then Mercy Hospital of Independence closed because of financial problems, leaving the town without a hospital. “The hospital I was born in, the hospital my kids were born in, is gone,” King said. “I know Medicaid expansion is not a panacea, but my constituents would have other options if we had it.”

King did something rare for politicians today. Instead of digging in on his party’s ideology, he did some research.

It involved spending a day with Julie Griffin, who runs a health center in Coffeyville. King met some of Griffin’s patients – people who work hard for low pay and suffer the health effects of poverty. Some were slowly dying, King said. The encounters changed his perspective. He now wants to consider a “Kansas-based” Medicaid expansion plan, one that won’t cost the state’s general fund and is done through private insurers.

King’s stance is a far cry from an e-mail missive sent out by Gov. Sam Brownback’s office in October that claimed expanding Medicaid without first eliminating waiting lists for other services for the disabled was “morally reprehensible.”

Brownback should take a page from King’s book and get to know some potential Medicaid recipients before deriding them as lazy couch surfers. Perhaps he too should spend a day with Griffin.

This story was originally published January 7, 2016 at 5:37 PM with the headline "Barbara Shelly: It’s a journey to expand Medicaid in Kansas."