Friday was definitely a wow day. The day started at 9:30 am. Everyone knew it would be a big day. But for me, little did I know how big it would be. I have been working on a Mandate Lite Health bill all session. My bill HB 2243 never made it out of committee. However, a senate bill SB 163 which was basically the same did make it through the Senate and through the House Insurance Committee but never made it above the line in the House. It was added during a conference committee. The conference bill HB 2107 came to the house yesterday morning. I thought it would be quick work and would be done. Little did I know that a Democrat would make a Sub Motion to send the bill back to conference committee, essentially killing the bill for this session. In Topeka there is a saying, "you want to die on the house floor so you can be resurrected and brought back to life". Well that is exactly what happened with this bill. We immediately started working to find those representatives that would be supportive of re-considering this bill. In the next hour and a half I came up with enough people to at least get the motion to reconsider passed. After we returned from lunch a representative made the motion to reconsider and it passed. Then we had to defeat the motion to send the bill back to the conference committee and after a lot of debate we won that vote. Then we were back to the original conference bill. We had an hour of additional debate and finally had a final action vote and we won that vote. At that point the bill has passed the house and will now go to the Governor for his signature and will then become law. That was quite a process and I learned a great deal from this bill. I do want to thank all of the Representatives that helped in changing the fate of this bill. This bill will provide a Health Policy that the people of Kansas can afford. I will also say I have a new appreciation for what lobbyist go through every day. There job is not easy. You get a lot of no's. You don't have to worry about me retiring one day and coming back as a lobbyist. That won't happen. We ended the longest session thus far this year at 10:30pm. We are now home on a 4 week break before going back to Topeka for the Veto Session. I am going to enjoy being back home for a while and getting back to work at my regular vocation. Happy Saturday from home in Wichita.
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