What is Medicaid Expansion?
Medicaid expansion helps people who make too much to qualify for standard Medicaid and too little to afford private health insurance access healthcare. Expansion keeps our neighbors healthier, more independent, and more financially secure by improving access to preventive and primary care. Medicaid expansion can also save lives by catching life-threatening illnesses before it is too late.
What if Kansas Expanded Medicaid?
Lower costs for ALL Kansans:
Expanding Medicaid will reduce health care costs for everyone by providing health insurance to 150,000 Kansans in rural areas, small towns, and cities across the state and making sure doctors and hospitals don’t have to provide care for free – costs that get passed on to all of us.
Kansas’ tax dollars would stay in Kansas:
Expanding Medicaid doesn’t have to be political. Forty other states have already expanded Medicaid, but every year Kansas doesn’t, the money we send to Washington, D.C., goes to California or New York instead. We need to keep tax dollars here in Kansas, to help Kansans afford the health care they need.
Help strengthen and protect rural hospitals:
When an uninsured Kansan ends up in the ER, the hospital often has to cover the bill. These extra costs hurt the hospital’s bottom line. As a result, eight Kansas hospitals have closed in the last decade — devastating workers and families in the area who relied on those hospitals for jobs and care.