BIG NEWS: Medicaid Expansion hearings happening next week! We need LOTS of testimony
This is a BIG deal and we need to seize the moment. An opportunity to fight for something good in Kansas versus constantly fighting against bad bills.
Committees in both the House and Senate are holding hearings on Medicaid Expansion on Wednesday, March 20!
We are providing a couple of different options with different deadlines for submitting testimony. The first deadline is Friday (3/15) by 5:00 pm. That is the easiest option, but we also have another deadline of 8:00 am Monday (3/18) that’s just a tiny bit more involved.
Kansas is one of only 10 states that has not expanded Medicaid, despite close attempts at expansion in 2017, 2019, and 2020.1
Expanding Medicaid helps ALL Kansans. It will:
cover 150,000 Kansans who fall in an insurance coverage gap
prevent rural hospitals from closing
lower health insurance costs/premiums for employers/individuals
and more
We need a full court press on this one — lots of Kansans providing written public comment (testimony) in support of Medicaid Expansion!
If you aren’t fully versed in Medicaid Expansion and that makes you unsure about writing testimony, we’ve got you covered. Testimony doesn’t have to be long, just pick a few talking points from below. The goal is to show overwhelming support from Kansans, not perfectly written testimony. 😊
TAKE ACTION: Testimony Options
The Alliance for Healthy Kansas, a coalition of more than 130 organizations and leaders across the state, has been working for years in support of expansion. They are now looking to Kansas citizens to help them get this across the finish line!
OPTION 1: The easiest, but the shortest timeline (by 5:00 pm Friday)
Alliance for Healthy Kansas (AFHK) is collecting testimony via email. This is pretty simple. Follow the guidelines in the Crafting Testimony section and type your testimony into an email addressed to info@expandkancare.com. They will take care of putting it in the correct format for both the House and Senate committees and will submit the testimony on your behalf.
If you wouldn’t mind helping Six Degrees of Activism track our subscribers sending testimony, please take 15 seconds to complete this survey.
OPTION 2: (Deadline 8:00 am Monday)
Go ahead and craft the language for your testimony and watch for a newsletter in the next day or two with our usual copy & paste testimony templates and instructions on submitting.
Crafting your testimony
Add a greeting (e.g., Dear Chairman and committee members,)
Include an opening sentence encouraging legislators to support Medicaid Expansion (e.g., Thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony in support of Medicaid Expansion.)
Add a few talking points from the Benefits of Medicaid Expansion section, below
Add a personal story if you have one (Reminder, testimony is public record, so only share what you are comfortable with.)
Wrap up with a final request to please support Medicaid Expansion
Sign off with your name and city
Find talking points in the Benefits of Medicaid Expansion session after this quick interruption…
Real Quick — Two other topics
I don’t want these items to be missed, so I’m dropping them in the middle of this newsletter.
A “Fetal Personhood” bill is being worked in a House committee on Tuesday. Watch for info on emailing committee members in a newsletter this weekend.
Or, follow Moms for Kansas and Six Degrees of Activism on Instagram. We expect to have the alert on Instagram sometime tomorrow.Johnson County has an extremely important Sheriff’s race on the November ballot. If you are not aware, our current sheriff, Calvin Hayden, has run unopposed in the last two election cycles and he’s not great. I’ll share some headlines about him in a separate newsletter some day.
In the meantime, the Prairie Village Police Chief, Byron Roberson, has filed to run for sheriff this year. I’d encourage those of you in Johnson County to check out Chief Roberson’s website and to attend his campaign kickoff on Saturday.
Oh yeah, he also provided opposition testimony for the bad gun bill last week. He gets a gold star from us for that!
Alrighty, back to Medicaid Expansion…
Benefits of Medicaid Expansion
This list is not all inclusive. If you are looking for more details in crafting your testimony, check out the bullet points here, and this article. Also, this 2024 Medicaid Expansion Briefing Book from Alliance for Healthy Kansas is an excellent and very easy to read resource.
150,000 low income Kansans would gain access to medical care.
Protects Kansans from medical debt. By expanding KanCare, tens of thousands of Kansans will be able to afford health insurance coverage. That protects them from medical debt so they can use those savings to pay for other essentials.
Healthcare costs for everyone would be reduced. Emergency rooms are treating Kansans without the ability to pay, raising the costs of health care for everyone. As workers gain insurance through expansion this uncompensated care declines, reducing the need to increase prices for all Kansans.
Marketplace premiums are 7% lower in states that expanded Medicaid compared to non-expansion states like Kansas.
About $700 million in annual federal funding would flow into the state.
Federal law provides a signing bonus for states that haven't implemented expansion. This would result in Kansas seeing up to an additional $450 million in new dollars during the first two years.
Medicaid Expansion won’t cost Kansans taxpayers a single cent. The bills being heard next week, HB 2556 and SB 355, are revenue neutral.
Addresses the mental health crisis with improved access to care and medication.
Preserves and strengthens rural healthcare. Rural hospitals face high levels of uncompensated care; 59 of the remaining 102 rural hospitals across Kansas are in danger of closing.
Makes Kansas more economically competitive. Expanding KanCare will not only improve the health of Kansans, but it will also help our state compete with our neighboring states, who have all expanded eligibility for their Medicaid programs.
I’ll close with this handy graphic from the briefing book referenced above and another plea for as many people as possible to seize this opportunity to expand medicaid by demonstrating to leadership in Kansas that we need to get this done once and for all!
Please join us in writing testimony and please ask some friends to submit testimony too!