Trump names former Kansas Gov. Colyer to lead federal panel on rural health care
President Donald Trump has named former Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer to chair a federal panel on rural health care.
Colyer, a Johnson County plastic surgeon, will lead the National Advisory Committee on Rural Health and Human Services, a group tasked with developing policies to close the health care gap in rural areas.
“As a Kansas doctor and a former governor, I know how important good medical care is to our rural communities,” Colyer said.
Colyer served as Kansas governor for one year after his predecessor, Sam Brownback, was appointed to an ambassadorship in Trump’s administration.
In announcing the appointment, the White House noted the former lieutenant governor’s backgound as a volunteer in war zones with the International Medical Corps and his role in crafting KanCare, Kansas’ privatized Medicaid system.
“President Trump’s administration has already put more attention on this challenge than it has seen for years, and we are delighted to welcome someone of Governor Colyer’s stature and experience to chair this Committee,” Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar said in statement.
Another Kansas Republican, former Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, led the same panel during George W. Bush’s presidency.
Colyer narrowly lost the GOP primary for governor in 2018 after Trump endorsed his opponent Kris Kobach on the eve of the election. At a rally in Topeka for Kobach months later, Trump floated plans to appoint Colyer to a federal position.
No appointment materialized until this week. Colyer’s spokesman confirmed chairing the panel would be a part-time position.
As governor, Colyer opposed expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, one of the main policy goals of his successor, Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly. Supporters of Kelly’s proposal say expanding the program, which provides coverage to low-income Kansans, would help rural hospitals in Kansas remain open.
In an interview with The Star in January, Colyer argued that expanding Medicaid would “siphon a large number of people out of the private insurance market and put them onto the public plan. And what that does is it drives up the rates for everyone and makes the private insurance market more unstable.”
