By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Republican Kansas Senate candidate Dr. Mark Steffen opposes Medicaid expansion in Kansas for several reasons.
"The big kicker that came up in this last legislative session was the realization that it was going to funnel taxpayer money to Planned Parenthood and the taxpayers were going to be paying for abortion," Steffen said. "I sat in a Senate meeting with (State Senator Ed) Berger. We heard the expert define how that was going to happen and it was irrefutable. Berger had no questions for the gentleman. It's not pie in the sky that that's going to happen. It's happened in all the other states that have expanded. It would happen here in Kansas."
Even if it looked like the state could afford the program in previous years, it doesn't look like that now.
"It's very clear that we're going to have a budget shortfall," Steffen said. "Medicaid is a monster. The expansion is perceived as being oh, a great opportunity because so much of it is paid for by the federal government, but it eats budgets up alive on the state level. We certainly can't handle that right now."
It is not out of a lack of compassion that Steffen takes his stance.
"I'm a physician," Steffen said. "I've taken care of Medicaid patients for 30 years. I've taken care of people with no insurance for 30 years and I've done so happily. I understand my way around this issue better than most anybody. I've helped start and turn a surgery center into a full-service community hospital. When I talk about Medicaid, I know it from the inside out, not from the outside in. It's an Obamacare relic. It was never designed to do any more than put more people on socialized medicine."
The Republican primary is August 4.