Worried about rural hospitals, AG Schmidt? There’s this thing called Medicaid expansion
Nine years ago, the head of the Sumner County Regional Hospital in rural, south-central Kansas told The Star that the state needed to expand Medicaid.
“It has to happen,” said Leonard Hernandez. Without it, he warned, the hospital’s tough financial challenges could not be met, and it would go out of business.
Medicaid expansion didn’t happen, as you may know. the hospital did close, in 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic began to escalate. Dozens of hospital beds were lost.
It’s a sad, troubling story. Since 2015, seven rural hospitals and clinics in Kansas have closed their doors, costing the state more than 200 hospital beds. Nearly three out of four rural hospitals and clinics in Kansas are still at risk for closing, according to a recent study.
Rural hospitals are rethinking their models, eliminating overnight beds, combining specialists, streamlining procedures and paperwork. But one reality hasn’t changed in a decade: Expanding Medicaid would provide coverage for 160,000 people while shoring up health care services in the state’s rural communities.
That’s why it’s so frustrating that Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, the odds-on favorite to oppose Gov. Laura Kelly this fall, professes support for rural health care while continuing to oppose expanded Medicaid in Kansas.
This week, Schmidt, who is a Republican, called on Kelly to ask for a waiver of COVID-19 vaccine requirements at rural hospitals. “If the federal government essentially pushes another group of nurses and workers out of those facilities because … they won’t get the shot,” he said, “the effect is to close some of those facilities or have to shrink their capacity.”
Of course, it isn’t good for capacity if health workers get sick with COVID-19, or pass the virus on to patients. The vaccination protocol helps defend against both.
It isn’t clear how many nurses and clinicians in rural Kansas have refused to take COVID-19 vaccines. At a small rural hospital in Holton, the Associated Press reported, roughly 87% of staff are vaccinated.
No rural health facility has closed since the Supreme Court approved federal vaccine mandates for health workers (despite Schmidt’s legal effort to stop the requirements).
If Schmidt really cared about rural hospitals — or rural patients — he would endorse expanded Medicaid and urge Republicans in the Legislature to do so immediately.
This is an important debate for Kansans to have this election year. Gov. Kelly will have to defend her record on COVID-19 response, unemployment insurance and the state’s economy.
But Schmidt and his party will have to defend the callous decision they’ve made over and over to deny Medicaid to the working poor, which continues to threaten rural hospitals and clinics. We’re anxious to hear the explanation. In all these years, we haven’t heard it yet.