It’s Medicaid’s Birthday – Let’s Celebrate by Expanding its Benefits to More Kansans

By Sheldon Weisgrau | July 30, 2019 Fifty-four years ago, on July 30, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson traveled to Independence, Missouri, and signed the Social Security Amendments into law, creating the Medicare and Medicaid programs. These two programs – which passed Congress with overwhelming bipartisan votes – have served as foundations of the health […]

Los Angeles Times: New data show that failing to expand Medicaid has led to 16,000 unnecessary deaths

By Michael Hiltzik | July 22, 2019 Adversaries of Medicaid expansion have always pointed to the lack of evidence that enrollment in Medicaid improves health and saves lives, and therefore the expansion is a waste. A new study should put that argument to rest, permanently. The researchers found not only that the expansion of Medicaid […]

Why Utah’s Partial Medicaid Expansion Should Not Be A Model for Kansas

By Sheldon Weisgrau | July 15, 2019 Over the course of the decade-long effort to expand Medicaid in Kansas, opponents have grasped at a number of gimmicks that impose barriers to providing health coverage to as many as 150,000 hardworking Kansans. The latest gimmick comes from the state of Utah, which recently received federal approval […]

Las Vegas Sun: Decision to expand Medicaid has been fruitful for state

By the Editorial Board | July 10, 2019 Nevada was an early adopter of Medicaid expansion in 2014, and since then has fought against Republican-led efforts to weaken the program. Now, new studies are starting to quantify the gains we’ve achieved through our efforts. And those gains are impressive. JAMA Cardiology, published by the American […]

Idaho Falls Post Register: An architecture of cruelty

By the Editorial Board | July 14, 2019 A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine provides considerable evidence that Medicaid work requirements, even if they sound good on paper, are in practice simply an architecture of cruelty that produces no discernible positive effects, simply a lot of pain. The study, which […]

Kansas Health Institute: Who Are the Remaining Uninsured Adult Kansans?

By Wen-Chieh Lin, Ph.D., Sydney McClendon, Madison Hoover, M.S. | July 15, 2019 Despite gains in insurance coverage since 2009 for nonelderly Kansas adults age 19-64, many remain uninsured. Based on the latest estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, 201,275 (11.9 percent) nonelderly Kansas adults were uninsured in 2017. This issue brief builds on information […]

Kansas City Star: Kansas GOP sees continued delay of Medicaid expansion as a win

By Paul Krugman | June 24, 2019 When Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning kept Kansas from expanding Medicaid for yet another year — and yes, he deserves credit for keeping some 150,000 Kansans uninsured even now — he insisted that it would just have to wait because there was so much heavy legislative lifting yet […]

New York Times: Self-Inflicted Medical Misery

By Paul Krugman | June 24, 2019 Over the weekend The Washington Post published a heart-rending description of a pop-up medical clinic in Cleveland, Tenn. — a temporary installation providing free care for two days on a first-come-first-served basis. Hundreds of people showed up many hours before the clinic opened, because rural America is suffering […]