WXPR
By: Soundbite Source
Kansas and the rest of the country saw the number of uninsured children drop to historic lows in 2016, according to a new report.
The Georgetown University Center for Children and Families found fewer than five percent of children nationwide are uninsured. In Kansas, the rate dropped from 5.1 percent in 2015 to 4.3 percent in 2016, and it’s a nearly 30-percent drop from 2013.
The Graham-Cassidy bill to repeal and replace the ACA would make big cuts to Medicaid in the next decade, the number one source of health-care funding for state budgets.
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Georgetown report author Joan Alker is executive director of the organization. She says the bill in Congress does nothing to address the actual drivers of health-care costs. “Medicaid is not the driver of health-care costs,” she says. “It’s things like prescription drugs going up. So I’m sure that governors would like new tools that would allow them to control costs, but they’re not getting those new tools. So, they are left holding the bag.”
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