Former Kansas Senate majority leader blames failure to expand Medicaid on Catholic Church
TOPEKA A former Senate majority leader blamed the states failure to expand Medicaid in 2020 on religious anti-abortion lobbyists, with the pivotal bill single-handedly torpedoed by a Kansas City archbishop.
Jim Denning, in an interview for the Kansas Oral History Project, said Aarchbishop Joseph Naumann basically stopped Medicaid expansion.
So if you were an opponent of Medicaid expansion, then hes your guy. If you were a proponent, youre mad at him, Denning said. He single-handedly torpedoed the bill because he said, You cant vote for Medicaid expansion until the abortion amendment passes with the public. So he killed it. It never came out of committee.
A spokesperson for the Kansas Catholic Church and leader of a Medicaid expansion advocacy group disputed comments made by Denning about the fate of Medicaid expansion in 2019 and 2020, when Denning controlled the Senates legislative calendar.
Alan Conroy, executive director of the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System, conducted the interview with Denning on April 13. The Kansas Oral History Project is a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving state history. The project released several new interviews with lawmakers as part of a series on the Statehouse.
https://kansasreflector.com/2023/06/02/former-kansas-senate-majority-leader-blames-failure-to-expand-medicaid-on-catholic-church/