Marshall expects air service funding to stay, health care to return

April 12--Kansas' new Big First representative said Tuesday the five communities in the district that rely on Essential Air Service should not be worried about losing the subsidy for their airports.

President Donald Trump's budget proposal released last month calls for eliminating federal funding for the program that gives 170 communities in the nation approximately $175 million a year to provide air service.

Hays is among those communities, along with Salina, Dodge City, Liberal and Garden City. A delegation from Hays -- Mayor Shaun Musil, Vice Mayor James Meier, Commissioner Henry Schwaller IV and City Manager Toby Dougherty -- recently traveled to Washington, D.C., and discussed the importance of access to air travel with Kansas Republicans Rep. Roger Marshall and Sens. Jerry Moran and Pat Roberts.

Marshall, in Hays on Tuesday prior to starting a northern-Kansas leg of his listening tour today, said it's important to understand Trump's blueprint is just the first offering in making a deal.

"It's a 'skinny budget,' " Marshall said, referring to the term for a first-draft budget. "It's a place to start. As one of my mentors told me, people need to realize Mr. Trump is not necessarily Republican or Democrat. He is a deal-maker. That was his first shot at making a deal with Congress."

Marshall said he was optimistic funding for EAS will be retained, especially with approximately 30 or 40 congressional signatures on a letter to the transportation committee requesting to fully fund service.

"We've got to fight for it, but I'm not panicked," he said.

The freshman congressman, an obstetrician from Great Bend, said his focus is to get the economy going because that will pay for programs people are concerned about, whether that be EAS, Meals on Wheels or school lunches. The No. 1 way to give the economy a boost, he said, is to pass a health care bill to replace the Affordable Care Act.

"I think passing the health care bill is going to show the country that Republicans can govern. And then that'll be a domino into the next steps," he said, which will be passing a budget and tax reform.

On March 24, House Speaker Paul Ryan pulled a GOP proposal to repeal Obamacare, as the ACA is commonly known, from a vote on the House floor when it appeared there would not be enough votes to pass it.

It was seen by some as a failure for the Republican Party and for Ryan's leadership, but Marshall said the move was part of the practice.

"It was just one step in the American process of making a law better," he said. "We weren't satisfied within the Republican party that it was the bill we were all comfortable with, so we had to take two steps back and sort this out a little bit.

"I look at it like iron sharpening iron, and I believe we will have an even better bill. So I don't think it's over with."

Part of the problem with the bill that was pulled, he said, was it was cumbersome dealing equitably with states that had expanded Medicaid and states that had not.

The 2010 ACA expanded the federal-state insurance program to people whose annual income was below 138 percent of the federal poverty level. In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the ACA was constitutional, but gave states the choice to opt out of Medicaid expansion.

"How do you make it equal?" Marshall said. "We're spending $60 billion a year on Medicaid expansion, and 80 percent of those monies are going to able-bodied Americans without dependents.

"I think most of us want to reprioritize Medicaid money for those who need it the most -- those with disabilities, elderly, infants, children, pregnant women," he said. "I think the argument is how do we best redirect those monies toward those who need it the most. That's my focus right now."

Nineteen states have opted out of Medicaid expansion, and while the Kansas Legislature passed a measure to expand the service just last month, it failed to override a veto from Gov. Sam Brownback.

A 2015 study by the Foundation for Government Accountability, a Naples, Fla., think tank founded by a Republican former legislator from Maine, found 82.4 percent of those covered in states that expanded Medicare are able-bodied adults with no dependents.

However, the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit, non-partisan organization, found that of adults enrolled in Medicare in 2015, nearly eight in 10 were working or in working families. Of those not working and receiving Medicare, 35 percent reported it was due to illness or disability, according to the foundation.

Another health care bill is in the works, and Marshall said he is a part of the talks on that.

"I've been very fortunate to be part of those negotiations and having conversations with Speaker Ryan and something called the Doc Caucus," he said.

The GOP Doctors Caucus consists of 15 men and one woman in Congress with medical backgrounds. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price was a member of the caucus as a representative from Georgia and is one person Marshall looks to for guidance, he said.

"He has become a great mentor, and I've developed a great relationship with him," Marshall said. "I think he's the bridge between the president and Congress. Trying to forge a bill that Dr. Price can work with is very important to me as well."

Marshall said he and the president are staying strong on the goal of replacing and repealing the ACA despite recent polls showing more of the public favors the law.

A Gallup poll released early this month shows 55 percent of those polled support the ACA, up from 42 percent in November. Forty percent said they would like to see the ACA kept in place with significant changes, while only 30 percent preferred to repeal and replace the measure.

"I think it's one piece of data, one point," Marshall said when asked if that would change his view. "But also, I think when the people that elected Donald Trump and the people that elected me elected on a basis of repeal and replace. That was what we ran on, and we want to fulfill that promise."

He said the health care bill in the works will be beneficial.

"I'm actually convinced that at the end of the day, that this bill is going to provide more coverage for more people at lower costs, and that this health care bill will literally help keep hospitals open," he said.

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