Kansas won’t be expanding their Medicaid program after all, after the state House of Representatives fell three votes shy Monday of overriding Gov. Sam Brownback’s veto of a bill that would have extended coverage to roughly 180,000 low-income residents under Obamacare.
The final tally was 81-44, meaning Democratic and centrist Republican supporters of expansion couldn’t cobble together the two-thirds majority needed to trump the governor in the 125-member chamber.
Decidedly conservative Kansas made headlines last week when it sent an expansion bill on Mr. Brownback’s desk, just days after a Republican effort to begin repealing and replacing Obamacare fell apart on Capitol Hill.
The White House-backed bill would have expressly forbid additional states from tapping federal funds that enticed 31 states, plus D.C., into expanding the federal-state insurance program for the poor.
Under Obamacare, states can extend Medicaid benefits to those making up to 138 percent of the poverty level. The federal government will pick up 95 percent of the costs of the expansion population this year, a share that will slide down to 90 percent by 2020 and beyond.
Some Republican governors, like Mr. Brownback, have said expansion would still be too costly for their states.
Mr. Brownback warned state lawmakers not to take up the expansion but they ignored him, saying the collapse of repeal efforts in Washington had killed his main argument for rejecting expansion.
The governor then rebuffed last-minute entreaties from advocates and hospital groups to reconsider his position.
“I am vetoing this expansion of ObamaCare because it fails to serve the truly vulnerable before the able-bodied, lacks work requirements to help able-bodied Kansans escape poverty, and burdens the state budget with unrestrainable entitlement costs,” he said Thursday in his veto message.
Rep. Steven Crum, a Democrat, said he was “very disappointed” in colleagues who backed Mr. Brownback on Monday.
“There were forums all around the state this past weekend and the ’no vote’ [representatives] that went to those completely ignored what their constituents told them,” he said in an email.
Mr. Crum said lawmakers will probably revive the effort at some point, unless the GOP-led Congress rallies around a plan to repeal Obamacare and eliminate the expansion.
“I believe it will probably be dead this session, but it will be back,” he said.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.