Mercy’s closing likely not a lone event; expand Medicaid now

September 21, 2015 - 12:00 AM

It’s funny, in that sad, shake your head kind of way, that it’s not until something affects you personally, that you take it seriously.
Take Sen. Jeff King, R-Independence, who for the past three years has voted against expanding Medicaid in Kansas, along with every other Republican legislator.
Upon news that his hometown hospital is due to close, in part because of Kansas’s negligence to expand Medicaid, he’s recently proposed giving the expansion some thought.
Otherwise, it’s a bet he’d continue to give short shrift to the fact that across the nation Kansas ranks among the lowest in providing adequate health insurance for its poor and disabled.
“Tut, tut,” legislators say, acting as if they are unable to remedy the situation.
Meanwhile, Kentucky — of all states — has become the nation’s leader in reducing its rate of uninsured.
How?
By expanding the parameters of Medicaid as designed by the Affordable Care Act.
As a result, the rate of those without health insurance has dropped by 41 percent in the Bluegrass State. The numbers in Kansas and Missouri, meanwhile, have dropped a meager 17 and 10 percent, respectively.
The good news is despite the efforts of Kansas to defy President Barack Obama’s signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act, has made its way here. Because of Obamacare, 57,000 more Kansans are receiving health insurance.
The idea of the Affordable Care Act was for all states to expand Medicaid to allow those earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level — an annual income of $16,105 for an individual — to receive the coverage.
In exchange for the federal funding to provide for that expansion, the feds would reduce their payments to hospitals and other entities for treating the indigent.
States cast a wider net, and the feds pull theirs in.
A Supreme Court decision, however, changed it so that states could individually decide to expand Medicaid. Some did, some didn’t.
And yes, Kansans got the short end of the stick.
So, hospitals, especially, are in a very tight pinch.
Even though their federal funding has been cut to treat the poor and disabled, state legislators have stood firm to deny providing a way out.
Rural hospitals such as Independence’s Mercy Hospital are hit the hardest because their clientele is predominately elderly, poor and disabled, limiting a hospital’s sources of income to primarily Medicare and Medicaid.