PITTSBURG, Kan. — The next legislative session in the Sunflower State doesn’t begin until after the first of the year, but Kansas Governor Laura Kelly is already working on her top priorities.
Governor Kelly made a stop Wednesday morning in Pittsburg as part of her “Healthy Workers, Healthy Economy” statewide tour. She launched this campaign as an effort to address her number one item on her agenda for the 2024 law-making session: Medicaid expansion.
She said Medicaid expansion could have saved three southeast Kansas hospitals that have closed since 2014. Governor Kelly notes that five previous attempts have been made to expand Medicaid in the Sunflower State, each of which has failed in the legislature.
“We will try again with our sixth proposal, incorporating the things that we know need to be there, and then we will, like we always have done, we will sit down with folks from the Senate and the House, and if there are areas to negotiate, to get to consensus and get a bill passed, we will do that,” said Governor Laura Kelly, (D)-Kansas.
“We have more and more hospitals that understand that if we don’t do this, there’s going to be a lot of hospitals that close down. There’s 40 of them on a list right now,” said Dennis Franks, CEO, Neosho Memorial Regional Medical Center.
The Kansas Legislature will go back into session on Monday, January 8th.
