© 2025
In touch with the world ... at home on the High Plains
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Our translator station serving St. Francis and Cheyenne County at 96.3 FM is off the air due to an air conditioning breakdown at its leased transmitter site, making it too hot for HPPR's equipment to operate. We are currently working to fix the situation. We apologize for the loss of service and ask listeners to tune to KZNK at 90.1 FM or listen on line through the player above or HPPR's mobile app.

After Brownback’s Medicaid veto, 150,000 Kansans to go without insurance

Gage Skidmore
/
Wikimedia Commons

In a move that has infuriated health advocates in his state and across the country, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback vetoed a measure last week that would have expanded Medicaid across the state.

As The Kansas City Star reports, the decision means 150,000 more Kansans will go without health care than if he had signed it. The bill passed the Senate in a 25-14 vote, and passed the house by a similarly wide margin of 81-44.

To explain his veto, Brownback claimed expanding Medicaid “fails to serve the truly vulnerable before the able-bodied.”

But Sean Gatewood, a spokesman for disabled Kansans, disagreed with this notion.

“[Brownback] needs to check the record,” he said. “The disability community’s 100 percent behind this.”

Former Governor Kathleen Sebelius also criticized her current counterpart.

“If this bill had come to my desk, I would have loved it,” she said.  

It's not yet known if the Legislature will be able to muster enough votes to overturn the veto.