With pressure mounting in Kansas since the announced closure of Independence, Kansas Mercy Hospital, Governor Brownback has spent time fighting back even Republicans who want another look at the idea of medicaid expansion.
His communication staff seems to have found the solution, using veiled references to a new "big city entitlement" and "Obamacare" to turn a debate over medicaid into a debate that assumes that uses a not-so-subtle racial jab to stop Medicaid expansion.
http://www.kansascity.com/...
Further, the email claims a moral objection to expanding Medicaid: it would provide a new entitlement, it says, “for able-bodied adults without dependents, prioritizing those who choose not to work before intellectually, developmentally, and physically disabled, the frail and elderly, and those struggling with mental health issues.”
The Brownback administration, of course, has struggled with the issues of mental health care, disability issues and care of the elderly far more than many states that have accepted expansion. The current wait list for many seeking CDDO and residential treatment care is in the years,
immediate care is measured in months, and the time to get an emergency bed in Kansas can take
long enough for a man to commit suicide in a Kansas jail.
The memo continues:
Willoughby says that makes no difference in the state. “Those who say Medicaid Expansion would save the Independence Hospital are lying,” she writes. “It wouldn’t. Instead, this Obamacare ruse funnels money to big city hospitals, creates a new entitlement class, and fails to rightly prioritize service for disabled citizens.”
The Brownback administration claims to prioritize care for those with disabilities, but this is a claim most disability advocates would sternly reject.
The Kansas Hospital Association strongly disagrees, as they have kept a running ticker on their website of dollars lost to Kansas hospitals for refusing medicaid expansion:
http://www.kha-net.org/
What is most troubling about this, though, is that in order to answer the question of hospital failures, the Brownback administration turns to invoking the idea that overly entitled "big city folk" will become an "entitlement class".
As far as code words and dog whistles go, they couldn't be more clear.
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