Kansas: The Far Right's Model for Hardline Healthcare

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Majority Leader Mitch McConnell finally released the Senate's secretive Affordable Care Act repeal bill. And while lawmakers on both sides of the aisle grapple with the implications of this potentially major piece of legislation, healthcare in America is stuck in a state of flux. 

But while the future of healthcare in America remains, for now, open to debate, we need look only as far as Kansas to envision a potential end game. Under the leadership of hardline Republican Governor Sam Brownback, the GOP-controlled Kansas legislature has enacted the types of tax cuts and minimalist government proposals that serve as the ideological foundation for the American hard right. And when the Supreme Court left it to the states to decide whether or not they wanted to accept a federally funded Medicaid expansion, Kansas said no thanks.

Kansas State Senator Barbara Bollier has been on the front lines of the movement to offer insurance to as many Kansans as possible. As a Republican, these efforts have not always gone appreciated by her party. Senator Bollier joins The Takeaway to offer her experience in fighting for better healthcare from within a government devoted to the politics of austerity.