Over the past couple of weeks, those of us here at Forward Kansas have done our best to educate you on the rouge actions of some members of the Kansas Legislature. Kansas Senator Mary Pilcher-Cook recently introduced a Constitutional Amendment to pre-emptively opt Kansas out of federal Health Care Reform. And of course she brought her cheerleaders from American’s for Prosperity (AFP) along for the show.
Well a new study called the Kids Count report, put out annually by the Kansas Action for Children, points out some important things which need to be taken into account as this battle wages on. As pointed out by Mike Hendricks at Prime Buzz:
- Some 42.69 percent of Kansas school children now qualify for free or reduced school meals.
- Nearly 40 percent are in low-income or poor households.
- 20,000 Kansas kids have lost insurance coverage since 2005 (or were born without it).
- Of the state’s urban counties, Wyandotte County leads the way in the number of children living in poverty. Wyandotte’s childhood poverty rate is 27.9 percent, compared to Johnson County’s 5.4 percent and Sedgwick County’s 16.7 percent.
This is far from acceptable, and enactment of a federal Health Care Reform bill like the one Dennis Moore voted on the other day, would help to ensure that these Kansan children were given the care they need.
I’m unaware if Pilcher-Cook just doesn’t care about the future of Kansas, or if she has some other plan to ensure that these numbers start reversing – one thing is for certain, the status quo is not acceptable, and it’s long past time she realized that.
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