Washington, D.C. — Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, governors and state legislators in Florida, Texas, Tennessee, and Kansas have been acutely aware of the urgent need to expand Medicaid coverage or risk leaving their citizens in the coverage gap, losing state jobs, and hurting their states’ economies. The federal government has notified these states that it will no longer support their irresponsible inaction with low-income pool, or LIP, funding when these states could simply cover struggling, uninsured families through Medicaid expansion. Health care is a matter of life or death, but leaders in these four states are treating access to affordable care like a matter of political gamesmanship. More than 1.8 million Americans would gain coverage if all four states expanded Medicaid, which would improve their health status, reduce mortality rates, and grow the states’ economies.
“Medicaid expansion has enabled roughly 4.6 million newly eligible Americans to get affordable care in the 30 states that have chosen to do so,” said Sharon Lee, a physician in Kansas City, Kansas, and a member of Doctors for America. “Yet again, our state leaders are putting their political ambitions ahead of the health of Kansans. Medicaid expansion would save the same hospitals that are being cut by LIP. The farcical fight over LIP funding is merely a distraction from the real issue at hand—which is that our government won’t listen to the people of Kansas, 60 percent of whom support expansion, but instead are listening to the tiny but well-funded opposition.”
Medicaid expansion is and has always been a matter of common sense. By refusing to expand Medicaid, Kansas is preventing 60,000 people from gaining coverage, costing the state $3.5 billion in economic activity and 40,000 new jobs and denying local hospitals $2.6 billion in reimbursements. Kansas’ continued refusal to expand Medicaid and its grandiose objections to the much anticipated expiration of LIP funding is nothing more than political posturing at the expense of thousands of Kansans.
The Affordable Care Act is working—more than 20 million people now get health care because of the law. It is time that conservative elected state officials stop playing games and let people get health coverage.
Click here to read “Myth Busting: Medicaid and Low-Income Pool Facts.”
For more information on this topic or to speak with an expert, contact Benton Strong at [email protected] or 202.481.8142.
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