Sharice Davids and Medicaid

While Cleaver advocated for affordable housing, Kansas Rep. Sharice Davids promoted increased access to healthcare. One of the provisions she pushed for — allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices, was dropped for lack of support in the Senate.

In a call with reporters on Wednesday, Davids said she often heard "heartbreaking" stories about people who could not afford their medication. Allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, she said, would bring down costs and is popular in her district.

"This is something that would save the government billions," Davids said.

The bill would, however, attempt to provide coverage for people in states that have not approved expanded Medicaid.

Davids has been pursuing the issue for months, seeing a federal solution as a way to get more Kansans access to health insurance. The state has failed to pass legislation that would allow those who make less than 138 percent of the federal poverty line ($36,570 for a family of four in 2021) to qualify for Medicaid.

Residents of states that haven't expanded Medicaid (like Kansas) would be eligible for a stipend to help pay for their insurance through the federal healthcare exchange. Originally, lawmakers proposed that people would be eligible for stipends until the federal government created a program to provide them with access to Medicaid.

"Hundreds of thousands of Kansans are uninsured simply because state politicians are choosing to leave money on the table and leave them out in the cold," Davids said. "I'm glad to see that the framework released today includes a federal strategy to close the Medicaid coverage gap." The latest proposal ditches the federal program. Manchin, a roadblock to several provisions in the bill, said he was concerned a federal program would be unfair to states that had expanded Medicaid on their own.