ELLY GRIMM

   • Leader & Times

Constituents of the Big First District got to recently hear from the candidates running to represent the district in Congress, and one of the topics covered was healthcare.

One of the questions during this discussion concerned the shortage of medical professionals and the risk of local hospital closures and what reforms could be enacted.

“A lot of people probably won’t like my answer, but I don’t feel like even Medicare expansion would save the hospitals. Hospitals don’t have to take Medicare or Medicaid, and I think that’s lost on a lot of people,” candidate Steven Jacob said. “I don’t know what the future’s going to be. The healthcare system is rather bleak, I don’t think it’s really going to get reformed. I retired early and I’m paying more than $700 a month for healthcare. It’s good insurance, but I know it’s going to just keep going up and keep being a problem going forward. I feel like if there was an all-encompassing solution to this issue, it would have been done by now. Money can’t fix everything, and we as a country are spending $2.5 billion a day on healthcare as it is.”

“The Big First District has more hospitals in it than any other district in the U.S., and there are more critical access hospitals than any other district,” candidate Tracey Mann said. “I have toured almost every one of those hospitals, and it’s helpful for me to get out and meet with hospital administrators and doctors and nurses and other professionals in that field who are actually delivering that care. When you get really ito this, you realize it varies widely county by county, and every one of them is so unique and different. I know there’s a new facility being built on the Fort Hays State University campus, and I know there’s a lot of work being done with the University of Kansas med students in Salina and the colleges that are working to spread the word about themselves in those more rural communities. Federally, we included the Rural Health Transformation Fund as part of the working families’ tax cuts, and that is $50 billion to help those rural hospitals. Kansas is punching way over its weight so far, and the money we’ve received from that fund has been amazing.”

“To address what is really a grave healthcare crisis in our state, especially in the rural communities, we need to restore the Medicaid cuts that were in the Big Beautiful Bill,” candidate Lauren Reinhold said. “We also need to restore the Affordable Care Act tax credits that expired, and we need to create a public option for health insurance. That will allow hospitals to have the revenue they need and also drive down the dependence on the private market and the profits from the private market. We need to move away from private health insurance as soon as possible, but it needs to happen gradually. Congressman Mann voted for those Medicaid cuts, he voted against restoring the ACA tax credits, and the Rural Health Transformation Fund is not going to make up for the losses our hospitals are going to see. You can’t take something away and then say ‘This great thing we get is fixing the problem,’ because it’s not. Hospitals are still at risk of closure. As far as attracting talent, we need student loan forgiveness through the Department of Education, and we also need to strengthen our rural communities through infrastructure in order to attract those professionals.”