The Medicaid Ambulance Response Vehicle is making stops all across the state and stopped Thursday at Mosaic Life Care-Albany and St. Joseph.
The vehicle is used to educate and promote voting “yes” for Amendment 2 on Aug. 4, which would expand Medicaid in the state of Missouri.
The vehicle was driven and occupied by members of Health Care For Missouri.
The push to get the amendment on the ballot has been a somewhat lengthy journey, but it is something that Mosaic officials are supporting and say it would positively impact future patients and the hospital.
Dr. Davin Turner, Mosaic president, said the hospital supports Medicaid expansion because it will allow patients to be able to not delay health care.
“There are so many hardworking people from Missouri, that every day they delay or deny themselves medical care because they don’t feel like they can afford it,” Turner said. “They’ll put this care off until it becomes a very serious problem before they come in to receive care, and they will receive care and they will receive the best quality care they can receive, whether it be here or in other medical facilities.”
Turner said around 230,000 Missourians would be able to have health care coverage if the Medicaid expansion passed.
Pat Dillon, chief government and community relations officer at Mosaic Life Care, said the initiative with the ambulance is to continue to stress the importance of Medicaid expansions to hospitals, especially rural hospitals.
Missouri is one of 14 states to still not have Medicaid Expansion, and Dillion said the time is now to push the expansion. He said it was a big deal to get the expansion on the ballot in August and now it just needs to be voted “yes.”
“it’s one of those topics that there’s a lot of debate on every state, I think goes through that, and our folks in the in the state decided it was time to get it on the ballot,” Dillon said. “They certainly got way over the minimum amount of signatures for this and it sounds like the citizens of the state are going to go forward with it in August, so we’re really excited for the hospitals and for those folks who need health care.”