HEALTH CARE OVERHAUL
My largest focus this session has been working on a new comprehensive health care plan for Kansas. A major portion of this health care plan involves addressing the direction and future of Medicaid. In recent years Medicaid eligibility has been expanding. Coverage for optional populations and services is the rule, not the exception with only 39 percent of Medicaid spending being spent on mandatory coverage and 21 percent of adults and 27 percent of children who qualified for Medicaid being eligible for private insurance. Not only is the system overburdened by people who could purchase private insurance, but with Medicaid beneficiaries paying little or no costs out of pocket there is no reason for them to be prudent health care consumers. Removing this price sensitivity has induced patients to consume more medical care by as much as 43%. This over consumption affects both Medicaid and the private market because an increase in demand for medical services means higher prices for everyone. Other problems associated with the current system are discouragement of working and saving in order to continue receiving entitlements and the overuse of emergency room care.

The health care plan I am assisting in developing would address many of these problems by creating incentives for individuals to go to community health facilities instead of the ER and strengthening resources in the local community. Another goal would be to expand the number of individuals with private insurance through providing greater choice, lower rates, and more efficiency which will improve the market for health care and create a greater safety net for those individuals who truly need this coverage. Other states that have enacted these types of changes and experienced success with them include Florida, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Idaho.

RESOLUTIONS SUPPORTING KANSAS EXPANSION
At the urging of Senator Pat Roberts, the House has passed three resolutions relating to what he calls a "once in a generation opportunity." The resolutions pledge the Kansas Legislatures support for a National Bio and Agro Defense Facility (NBAF) and urge the United States Department of Homeland Security, United States Department of Agriculture, United States Department of Health and Human Services, President Bush, the Kansas Congressional Delegation and others to consider two sites in Kansas as the location for this new federal laboratory. A Presidential directive has charged the Department of Homeland Security with coordinating "countermeasure research and development of new methods for detection, prevention technologies, agent characterization, and does relationships for high-consequence agents". There are currently no facilities in the country that meet the requirements of this directive. Therefore, the Department of Homeland Security is seeking a location to build a $451 million, 500,000 square feet NBAF and is actively considering Manhattan, or Leavenworth, KS. This facility would provide 500 high paying standard jobs and have a $3.5 million dollar impact on the Kansas economy. The Legislature has shown its support for this project through these resolutions, but Governor Sebelius and the Kansas Bioscience Authority have also shown their support by creating a task force to lead Kansas’ efforts to acquire the NBAF.

FEBRUARY IS BLACK HISTORY MONTH
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said in a speech on December 31, 1955: "If you will protest courageously, and yet with dignity and Christian love, when the history books are written in future generations, the historians will have to pause and say, ‘there lived a great people – a black people – who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization.’"