by Carl Gibson
The wingnut experiment in Sam Brownback’s Kansas has led
to more suffering across the board — not just for the state’s economy,
but for people with disabilities who are losing life-sustaining
services.
At the time of his inauguration, Brownback was touted by fellow repugicans as a model example of what wingnut governance
nationwide could look like. While he promised to rejuvenate the state’s
economy by slashing the state’s top income tax rate by 26 percent, his
fiscal policy has instead blown an
$800 million hole in the state budget,
downgraded the state’s bond rating, and slowed job growth to a
much lower rate than the national average. Brownback, once thought to be a
strong contender for the 2016 repugican pretender nomination.These tax cuts have been devastating for Kansas’
disabled population.
Since Brownback’s inauguration, 1,414 Kansans with disabilities have been
forced off
of the Medicaid physical disability (PD) waiver. In January of 2013,
Brownback became the first governor to fully privatize Medicaid
services, claiming he would save the state $1 billion in 5 years without
having to cut services, eligibility, or provider payments. Now, under
Brownback’s “KanCare,” PD waiver cases are handled by for-profit,
out-of-state, Fortune 500, publicly-traded managed care services. Kansas
has contracts with
three managed care profiteers — United Healthcare, Sunflower State Health Plan (owned by Centene Corporation), and AmeriGroup.
Amerigroup and Centene each gave $2,000, Kansas’
maximum allowed contribution, to Brownback’s re-election campaign.
“They wanted to cut my full-time care hours by 76 percent, which all
three of my doctors said was totally unrealistic,” said Finn Bullers, a
disability rights advocate who suffers from muscular dystrophy, uses a
wheelchair, has type 1 insulin-dependent diabetes, and requires a
ventilator in his throat to breathe. “Essentially, they wanted three out
of every four hours to go away.”
“Often, these are not optional services,” said Rocky Nichols,
executive director of the Kansas Disability Rights Center. “These are
life-sustaining services like properly caring for and cleaning out
feeding tubes, colostomy bags, and other devices so people don’t die,
transferring the person with a mobility impairment from the chair so
they can toilet, assisting with the critical and life-sustaining
activities of daily living that most of us take for granted. These are
basic human needs, not optional wants.”
But Brownback’s claims of savings without risking patient eligibility
is mere sleight of hand when taking a closer look at the numbers. When
Kansas experienced a $217 million revenue shortfall in April of 2014,
Brownback actually broke a promise made to the federal government as to
how many people with disabilities would be served. When applying to
launch the KanCare program, the Brownback junta originally
promised the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services it would
accommodate
7,874 people
on the PD waiver, according to numbers from the Kansas Department for
Aging and Disability Services. After the first revenue shortfall,
Brownback
changed that number to 5900 – nearly a 25 percent cut in services amounting to $26 million.
Just before Brownback’s inauguration, Kansas served 6,752 people on
the PD waiver. More than 2,000 people with disabilities were added just
in the last decade as a result of more advanced healthcare and disabled
people living longer lives. However, the gradual uptick in new enrollees
stopped abruptly once Brownback took over. According to
this chart,
over 1,400 disabled Kansans were dropped from the waiver between 2010
and 2014, with a sharp decline in 2014, coinciding directly with the
revenue shortfalls resulting from the recent tax cuts.
“It is mind-boggling to think that in 2004, just ten years ago, there
were 4,527 people on the waiver… It grew to 6,752, and it’s been in a
death spiral ever since then,” Nichols said. “That cannot be an
accident. There is just no way you can have, year after year, for four
years in a row, those types of reductions in the number of people
served.”
According to one state elected official, the sudden drop-offs could
easily be traced back to Brownback’s tax cuts and privatization agenda.
State Senator Laura Kelly, ranking member of the public health and
welfare committee, said it’s no coincidence that the physically disabled
are having life-sustaining services cut with the inception of KanCare
and the drops in state revenues.
“I think it’s hard to divorce the tax cuts from anything that’s happening in Kansas’ state government,” Sen. Kelly said.
If Brownback’s income tax plan is to be fully realized and the state
of Kansas has a 3.9 percent income tax rate by 2018, Kansas will have
lost
$5 billion
in tax revenue. To put that in perspective, Kansas currently operates
on a $6 billion state budget. Advocates like Bullers say if state
revenues continue to plummet, so will the number of people on the PD
waiver.
“I don’t want to use hyperbole, but a lot of people die when these policies get implemented,” Bullers said.
Bullers, a former 15-year veteran reporter for the Kansas City Star
and father of two, fought from the time of his managed care review in
January of 2013 all the way to New Years Eve of 2013 for his full-time
care to be restored. He used his status as a public figure in Kansas to
organize awareness campaigns in both traditional and social media, and
even arranged a meeting with Brownback. Bullers said he “got really
pissed off” at Brownback’s response to a question he asked about not
having a home care provider available if his ventilator came loose,
stopping air from getting into his lungs.
“He said, ‘Just go over to your neighbor’s house and they’ll put it
back on for you,’” Bullers said. “I mean, here’s the governor of the
state of Kansas, telling me that, you know, your life isn’t worth it,
that it’s okay if you die and leave two small children without a
father.”
A 2006 Rolling Stone profile of then-U.S. Senator Brownback referred to him as
“dog’s Senator,”
in reference to Brownback’s outspokenness about his 'christian' delusion.
But Bullers described Gov. Brownback as “vengeful” and “hypocritical,”
saying Brownback didn’t adhere to Jesus’ teachings about caring for the
poor and the sick.
“We hear all the time about his ‘family values’ and how he’s a
cultgoer,” Bullers said. “You just have to ask yourself where the
Golden Rule plays into all this.”
As of mid-October, Brownback has left
$350 million on the table in Medicaid assistance from the federal government as a result.
“He would rather have people suffer than capitulate and admit the president didn’t do such a bad job,” Bullers said.
