Kansas' Brownback takes healthcare from lower-income worker’s children

By Otto

The Kansas Republicans latest action to make up for state budget short falls is to cut its insurance assistance to the children of lower-income state workers by half, according to TheTopeka Capitol Journal. Taking insurance from poor children is hardly any different from taking candy from a baby. It shows, once again. that our Governor Sam Brownback and his ilk in the state legislature have no conscience when it comes to taking from poor children to make up for the tax-break gifts they bestowed on their rich friends and backers. While the tax cuts are not life and death policy for the wealthy, taking away health care could be physically harm the children of poor workers.

In a major act of hypocrisy the governor is planning to let these children enrol in a federal health program — a move made possible through the Affordable Care Act. Yes that is the same Affordable Care Act (Obama Care) that Brownback has vowed to fight down to his dying last breath. He has refused badly needed federal health care grants that would have allowed him to expand Medicaid. He has done his best to keep Obama Care out of Kansas in every way possible. Kansans have been paying for Obama Care but getting practically none of the benefits from it. We can thank Governor Brownback and his supporters for this situation. 

Now Brownback continues to stick to those tax cuts stubbornly, even as the state budget goes down like the Titanic.

So now he rolls back on to Obama Care to get money needed to make up for lower-income state workers’ children’s health insurance.

According to The Topeka Capitol Journal;

“In July, the Health Care Commission — a panel made up of government officials and current and retired workers that governs the State Employee Health Plan — voted to eliminate $2.2 million in funding for Kansas’ Healthy KIDS program.

Healthy KIDS, now nearly a decade old, helps subsidize health insurance for the children of lower-income state workers. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment, the agency that administers the state health plan, said Healthy KIDS has 1,941 participants...

… Plans to allow state workers to enroll in CHIP also follow decisions by Gov. Sam Brownback’s administration earlier this year to decrease state funding to Kansas’ overall CHIP program by $17 million. The administration opted to use an increase in federal funding for the program to make up the $17 million cut, rather than use it to expand CHIP coverage.”

This is the same governor and legislators who blather on and on about the cruelty of killing un-born fetuses and the so called “Planned Parenthood scandal.”

“We’re talking about humans here. Not just pieces of tissue,” Brownback said.

But when it comes to children who are living and breathing—there is no concern at all that these children might get sick or even die from a lack of health care. They don’t count as humans.

We continue to expose the hypocrisy of the Kansas Republicans—or any Republicans for that matter—as they destroy the poor and working people’s way of life in this country.

Pix by sparklepony.blogspot.com.

Pix by savingtosuitorsclub.net.