Abortion politics kills Kansas Medicaid expansion for the year
The Kansas Senate has slammed the door on expansion of Medicaid until next year.
Stymied for months, Senate Democrats attempted a last-ditch effort to bring Medicaid to a vote on the final day of this year’s session Thursday. But they lost a pivotal procedural vote on a floor amendment by Sen. Dinah Sykes, D-Lenexa.
Her amendment would have replaced the contents of a routine bill dealing with power transmission and cleared the way for Gov. Laura Kelly to accept federal funding for Medicaid expansion.
The federal government has offered to cover 90 percent of the cost of extending the state’s KanCare Medicaid program to an estimated 130,000 uninsured Kansans.
But Sen. Ty Masterson, R-Andover, challenged it under Senate procedural rules that require that any amendments be “germane” to the topic of the bill that’s to be amended.
The Senate Rules Committee, controlled by Republicans, held an impromptu meeting and sided with Masterson, ruling that the Sykes amendment was not germane to the utilities bill.
An effort to overturn the committee decision failed on a vote of 26-14.
“Anyone who cannot decipher that this is not a utilities issue I challenge whether they have an ethical quandary on actually following the rules of the Senate,” said Sen. Kevin Braun, R-Kansas City.
Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning, R-Overland Park, who had worked out a compromise with Kelly on Medicaid expansion, said he voted not to replace the utilities bill out of respect for the rules.
But he also said he was disappointed that his plan never came to a vote because of Republicans who have tied the fate of Medicaid expansion to passage of a loosely-related anti-abortion constitutional amendment known as “Value Them Both.”
“I personally spent 2,000 hours building that bill,” Denning said. “I’m profoundly disappointed we didn’t bring it up to the floor for a debate . . . and tying that to the Value Them Both amendment, I put that in the BS column.”
Senate President Susan Wagle, R-Wichita, a staunch opponent of Medicaid expansion, vowed early in the session that it wouldn’t be put to a vote unless both the House and Senate passed “Value Them Both.” The constitutional amendment was designed to overturn a Kansas Supreme Court ruling that found the Kansas Constitution protects the right of a woman to have an abortion.
That’s an important distinction because it would protect abortion rights in Kansas if the U.S. Supreme Court, which has become more conservative during the Trump administration, overturns the precedent of the Roe v. Wade decision, which currently protects abortion rights nationwide.
Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau, D-Wichita, supported Medicaid expansion and said she was voting on behalf of “thousands of constituents in the 29th District that I know are dying” because they don’t have a personal physician and can’t seek treatment until they’re in crisis and can go to the emergency room.
Sen. Gene Suellentrop, R-Wichita, defended linking Medicaid expansion to abortion policy.
“In the last number of weeks, our constituents have not been able to go to church and our abortion clinics remain open,” said Suellentrop, who went on to say that about 7,000 abortions a year are performed in Kansas.
“It rings pretty hollow (to be) expressing concern about your constituents when you support that kind of activity,” Suellentrop said.
Alliance for a Healthy Kansas, which has pressed for Medicaid expansion, said the Legislature failed to keep a promise of giving the bipartisan plan a fair chance.
“Another legislative session has come to a close without passage of KanCare expansion,” said a statement from April Holman, executive director of the alliance. “A small group of House and Senate leaders have left tens of thousands of Kansans without access to affordable health care in the midst of a global pandemic.”
Contributing: Jonathan Shorman of The Eagle
This story was originally published May 21, 2020 at 4:28 PM with the headline "Abortion politics kills Kansas Medicaid expansion for the year."
