Monday, Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly said she wants to pay for expanded Medicaid in her state by legalizing — and taxing — medical marijuana.
Details are still vague, and full costs weren’t clear Monday. The exact structure of the tax will be important. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t ask sick people who need marijuana to help pay for health insurance for the working poor.
In concept, though, using medical marijuana revenues to provide quality health coverage for 165,000 Kansans could break the political logjam that has delayed Medicaid expansion for years.
It would pull Kansas even with Missouri, where voters approved expanded Medicaid and medical marijuana at the polls. (The two programs are not linked in the state.) Legalizing cannabis for medicinal purposes and expanding Medicaid are popular even in conservative areas.
Republicans in the Kansas Legislature have long resisted Medicaid expansion, claiming it costs too much. Missourians heard much the same argument heading into the election last August, when expansion was on the ballot.
Surprise: In Gov. Mike Parson’s new budget, Medicaid is expanded to cover 275,000 Missourians — without a tax increase, and without major spending cuts to other state responsibilities. It can be done.
“By combining broadly popular, commonsense medical marijuana policy with our efforts to expand Medicaid, the revenue from the bill will pay for expansion,” Kelly said in a statement.
Expanding Medicaid would be important in Kansas even in normal years. It would help rural hospitals and rural economies. It would provide a major safety net for the working poor, who earn too much for traditional Medicaid but not enough for subsidies in the Affordable Care Act exchanges.
In the middle of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, though, expanding the program is a greater moral imperative. Kansas can no longer accept its “doughnut hole” status as the only state in the region to lack a plan for expanding the program.
“Getting 165,000 Kansans health care, injecting billions of dollars and thousands of jobs into our local economies, and protecting our rural hospitals will be critical to our recovery from the pandemic,” Kelly’s statement said.
Republicans in the Legislature are now frantically trying to talk their way out of an approach the public supports. “If Medicaid expansion is revenue neutral like we’ve always been told, why does it need a revenue source to pay for it?” said a tweet from state Rep. Dan Hawkins.
The answer is easy: Because Republicans like Dan Hawkins have insisted on it, in defiance of facts, evidence and compassion.
“Gov. Kelly envisions a Kansas where you can choose not to work and the taxpayers will foot the bill for you to stay home and smoke supposedly medical marijuana,” he said Monday. It’s hard to imagine a comment that’s more cruel.
Do Republicans really want to take that message to voters in two years?
Kelly’s proposal leaves Republicans with two simple arguments: Kansas can’t expand Medicaid because poor people don’t deserve health care, and it can’t legalize medical marijuana because sick people don’t need it.
