By DAVE RANNEY
KHI News Service

TOPEKA — AARP Kansas officials and volunteers spent much of Wednesday morning reminding legislators of the organization’s support for expanding the state’s Medicaid program.

“We are pro-Medicaid expansion,” said Andrea Bozarth, director of community outreach for AARP Kansas. “Twenty percent of the people would be affected by Medicaid expansion are between the ages of 50 and 64. That’s who we represent.”

Kansas is one of 23 states that have chosen not to expand their Medicaid programs to include adults whose incomes are below 138 percent of the federal poverty line.

Currently, low-income children, pregnant women and the elderly are eligible for Medicaid. Childless adults are not.

Expanding Medicaid, Bozarth said, would benefit seniors who are not yet eligible for Medicare.

“A lot of times, these are people who’ve either been laid off through no fault of their own or who’ve had to take time off work to care for a relative or a partner who has a chronic illness and they’re trying to get back in the workforce,” Bozarth said. “They find themselves without any medical coverage at all.”

Bozarth was one of about a dozen AARP members who delivered packets of fresh-baked cookies to legislators’ offices. Attached to the packets were cards that outlined the group’s legislative priorities for this year:

• Expanding Medicaid;
• Aligning the state’s durable-power-of- attorney laws with those in other states;
• Preventing employers from basing hiring decisions on applicants’ credit scores; and
• Requiring nursing homes to provide more hands-on care.

“Kansas has one of the lowest rates of required hours of nursing care in the country,” Bozarth said. “We’re at two hours a day now – average. We’d like to get that raised to 4.2 hours a day because research shows there would be positive outcomes for the residents.”

The credit-score issue, Bozarth said, is driven by concerns that when people in their 50s and 60s give up their jobs to care for an elderly parent, their credit scores often suffer, making it difficult for them to return to the workforce.

AARP, she said, supports streamlining durable-power-of-attorney laws in ways that would promote uniformity among states.

“The way it is now, you can be in Kansas and be durable power of attorney for someone in another state and not know what the law is because they’re different,” Bozarth said.

Ten states, she said, have begun coordinating their durable-power-of-attorney laws.

“We’d like Kansas to be part of that, too,” she said,

The AARP members left cookies in each of the 165 legislators’ offices.

“There was a lot of interest in the issues,” said Mary Tritsch, AARP Kansas’ director of communications. “We were well-received. We had a lot of people tell us they’re AARP members.”

AARP Kansas has nearly 335,000 members, all of whom are at least 50 years old.

Rep. Julie Menghini, a Pittsburg Democrat, met with Borzarth’s group for several minutes.

“For me and for the people in my district, Medicaid expansion is a huge issue,” she said. “It’s an issue that I hope will be able to work its way up to the front of whatever we’re able to accomplish this session. But I have to say I’m surprised by how little support there is for it.”

Gov. Sam Brownback and the Legislature’s Republican leaders have said they are worried that federal funding for the expansion would significantly decline or disappear over time, leaving the state to bear the full cost.