{"id":3479,"date":"2024-04-03T17:01:30","date_gmt":"2024-04-03T17:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=3479"},"modified":"2024-04-03T17:24:53","modified_gmt":"2024-04-03T17:24:53","slug":"for-red-state-holdouts-like-kansas-is-expanding-medicaid-within-reach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=3479","title":{"rendered":"For Red State Holdouts Like Kansas, Is Expanding Medicaid Within Reach?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As Southern states reconsider Medicaid expansion, Gov. Laura Kelly of Kansas is pushing her own plan meant to appeal to conservatives. So far, success has been elusive.<\/p>\n

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As lawmakers in a nearby hearing room debated last month whether to support her legislation to expand Medicaid, Gov. Laura Kelly of Kansas dared the state\u2019s Republican House speaker to hold a vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf he thinks he can kill it, bring it,\u201d Ms. Kelly, a soft-spoken moderate Democrat, said in an interview in her sprawling office suite at the State Capitol in Topeka.<\/p>\n

The next morning, in his own office off the House floor, Speaker Dan Hawkins showed no sign of yielding. He described Medicaid expansion as \u201calmost like the greatest Ponzi scheme ever devised.\u201d The same day, a House committee voted against sending Ms. Kelly\u2019s bill to the floor, derailing the proposal \u2014 at least for now.<\/p>\n

The standoff between Ms. Kelly and Mr. Hawkins represented one fight in a fierce political battle playing out in several state capitals over the future of Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor. In Kansas and in a handful of Republican-controlled states in the South, supporters of expanding the program under the Affordable Care Act have renewed their efforts to overcome longstanding Republican opposition, generating a sense of headway.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Yet neither Ms. Kelly nor backers of Medicaid expansion elsewhere have managed to advance legislation far enough to become law, a reflection of the continuing political power of conservative ideas about the nature of government-subsidized coverage and the people deserving of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really the fundamental moral question of where the safety net should be,\u201d said Ty Masterson, the Republican president of the Kansas Senate and a longtime opponent of expansion. \u201cAnd the safety net should be on the frail and elderly and on the disabled and all the low-income mothers and children.\u201d<\/p>\n

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As Southern states reconsider Medicaid expansion, Gov. Laura Kelly of Kansas is pushing her own plan meant to appeal to conservatives. So far, success has been elusive.As lawmakers in a nearby hearing room debated last month whether to support her legislation to expand Medicaid, Gov. Laura Kelly of Kansas dared the state\u2019s Republican House speaker to hold a vote.\u201cIf he thinks he can kill it, bring it,\u201d Ms. Kelly, a soft-spoken moderate Democrat, said in an interview in her sprawling office suite at the State Capitol in Topeka.The next morning, in his own office off the House floor, Speaker Dan Hawkins showed no sign of yielding. He described Medicaid expansion as \u201calmost like the greatest Ponzi scheme ever devised.\u201d The same day, a House committee voted against sending Ms. Kelly\u2019s bill to the floor, derailing the proposal \u2014 at least for now.The standoff between Ms. Kelly and Mr. Hawkins represented one fight in a fierce political battle playing out in several state capitals over the future of Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor. In Kansas and in a handful of Republican-controlled states in the South, supporters of expanding the program under the Affordable Care Act have renewed their efforts to overcome longstanding Republican opposition, generating a sense of headway.Yet neither Ms. Kelly nor backers of Medicaid expansion elsewhere have managed to advance legislation far enough to become law, a reflection of the continuing political power of conservative ideas about the nature of government-subsidized coverage and the people deserving of it.\u201cIt\u2019s really the fundamental moral question of where the safety net should be,\u201d said Ty Masterson, the Republican president of the Kansas Senate and a longtime opponent of expansion. \u201cAnd the safety net should be on the frail and elderly and on the disabled and all the low-income mothers and children.\u201dWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3481,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3479"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3482,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3479\/revisions\/3482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}