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Hospital Association Chief Tangles With Brownback On Medicaid Expansion

Dave Ranney file photo
/
KHI News

The president of the Kansas Hospital Association is taking issue with recent comments made by Gov. Sam Brownback about Medicaid expansion.

The governor said rather than lobbying for expansion, hospitals should address their financial problems by innovating and getting more efficient. He said reductions in Medicare payments triggered by the Affordable Care Act are the biggest problem for Kansas hospitals.

But hospital association president Tom Bell says the governor is wrong about that.

“I think the facts show that argument is just not correct,” Bell says. In a letter to Brownback, Bell says the billions of additional federal dollars that could be provided by Medicaid expansion would more than offset the reductions in Medicare for most Kansas hospitals.

Thirty-one states have expanded their Medicaid programs to cover more poor adults. Kansas and Missouri are among the 19 that have not.