ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
U.S. Senator Jerry Moran was in Liberal last week to visit with leaders at Southwest Medical Center and Seward County Community College and to hear local concerns about health care and higher education.
Moran said his visit to SWMC, as well as other hospitals in Western Kansas, had to do with the challenge of keeping the doors open to those facilities, keeping pharmacists on the state’s Main Streets and maintaining overall access to health care in the Sunflower State.
“If we lose our health care delivery system, the future of the community begins to disappear,” he said. “It’s certainly less bright if you don’t have access to health care. We can’t get senior citizens to stay. We can’t get young families to come. We care a lot about protecting rural Kansas and making sure there’s access to health care.”
Along with visiting hospitals in the region, Moran said a reconciliation bill gives some people optimism of helping with health care issues in rural Kansas.
“We were successful in making sure Kansas has the opportunity to expand the Medicaid program in our state,” he said. “That’s contrary to what the headlines are talking about, but there’s ways you can enhance Medicaid reimbursement. Kansas was about to run out of time, and we made sure the bill allowed them to make their application for improved Medicaid reimbursement.”
Another measure in Congress recently created is a $50 billion fund to help hospitals, and this will be administered by state leaders in Kansas.
“Their job in Kansas is to utilize that money over the next five years to better fund the opportunity for our hospitals and health care providers to remain in business,” Moran said. “The challenge that was emphasized to me is the problem is we don’t have enough health care workers, particularly in mental health. Finding somebody who is a professional in mental health is nearly impossible, and we need more doctors, nurses, advanced practitioners, physicians’ assistants, lab techs and rad techs.”
Moran said the tie between SCCC and SWMC this week was for the two facilities to work together in hopes of seeing expanded opportunities for workforce development in health care.
Moran said much of what he now knows about health care, higher education and other issues comes from conversations with constituents, including administrators and board members at both SWMC and SCCC.
In addition to SCCC, Moran also visited Dodge City Community College, and he said his visits to both schools primarily had to do with a checkup on the schools.
“I asked, ‘How are things going? How can I be of help? Is there something we’re missing?’” he said. “It’s also to see the results of the efforts. We were successful in designating money for Seward County Community College to utilize their West Campus to educate and develop a workforce for trucking and the commercial driver’s license, and I wanted to see if everything was going well.”
Moran said Wednesday’s report from SCCC President Brad Bennett and the school’s Board of Trustees was that program is being expanded.
“More people are going to be able to apply,” Moran said. “We’re growing the size of the class, and here in this part of Kansas, this part of the country, trucking is a huge component of the economy.”
Moran said having people who are trained to drive trucks safely and can be hired is important to the region.
Moran likewise wanted to make sure taxpayer dollars that helped fund the West Campus were being spent well. He said school leaders assured him they were.
Last week’s visit to Liberal was accompanied by rain showers, and Moran said it was appropriate because he considers precipitation a driving factor of the well-being of Southwest Kansas and its leading industry.
“It puts people in better moods, but what that really means is agriculture is still at the front of how we earn a living and how our economy is capable of growing,” he said.
Moran said Congress was recently successful in passing portions of the Farm Bill, but the safety net of the legislation is Title I, which helps farmers when commodity prices are low and input costs are high.
“It allows the farmer to receive a payment in those circumstances where it doesn’t work,” he said. “We did it as part of the reconciliation bill, which means it happened earlier than it otherwise would, and that was to enable a farmer to go to his or her banker of have a program in place which allowed them to be able to borrow money to start the new year.”
