All Sam Brownback has to do is stop being Sam Brownback for a minute
Republicans have a long history of sabotaging the ACA to the determent of their own constituents. About 5 million people could have health insurance right now if Republican states would just say “um, yeah” to Medicaid expansion.
To punish Obama, red states including Texas, Florida and George — three of the states with the highest uninsured rate in the nation — have been helping to pay for Medicaid expansion and getting nothing in return for years now.
It seems that Kansas has finally decided that Obama — and many of their state’s most vulnerable families — have been punished enough.
Both state houses have approved a bill that would expand coverage to 150,000 Kansans and the bill passed with some Republican votes. Now Governor Sam Brownback gets to decide that fate of a population larger than Kansas City, Kansas, the state’s third largest municipality.
Alan Pyke from ThinkProgress reports:
Brownback has 10 days to decide what to do. His administration this week reiterated opposition to expanding the state’s Medicaid program, known as KanCare. But the governor himself has stayed mu, Alliance for a Healthy Kansas head David Jordan told ThinkProgress.
“His staff put out oppositional statements yesterday, but he wouldn’t answer the question himself as to what his action will be,” Jordan said.
We have ten days and Kansas needs your help.
Know a Kansan? Or do you know someone who may know some Kansans?
Tell them to call Governor Sam Brownback. The number is 785-368-8500.
Tell him to take the coverage his state has been paying for because it not only will help insure 150,000 of your loved ones and neighbors but it can also help lower the entire state’s insurance premiums.
Kansas has been petri dish to test how conservative dogmatism driven by cultural fears make everyone — except the super rich — poorer. That’s a lesson we’re all doomed to learn for the next few years.
Still it would be nice to remind the state that even as Republicans in Washington DC are deciding how to make their health care worse, Democrats and a few saner Republicans are trying to get their ass covered.
For more motivation read this tweetstorm from Andy Slavitt — who ran the Affordable Care Act as the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under Obama — and never dreamed that we’d ever get this close to expanding Medicaid in Kansas.
