Robin Opsahl covers the state legislature and politics for Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared.

Iowans using wheelchairs through the state Medicaid program will no longer need a prescription and in-person doctor visit to get their wheelchairs repaired after a policy change by Iowa Department of Health and Human Services.

Democratic State Representative Josh Turek said in an August 13 interview that the measure proves advocacy can make a difference. Previously, Iowa Medicaid members were required to get a prescription and have a meeting with a health care provider in order to repair wheelchairs—a requirement Turek said was unnecessary, as wheelchair users have already been prescribed the equipment when they received it.

“This was just an unnecessary barrier that was causing an enormous amount of harm and suffering to the disabled population, delaying the process weeks or months for people to just be able to get a wheelchair repair,” Turek said.

Two bills Governor Kim Reynolds signed on May 1 will make advanced testing for breast cancer and other diseases more accessible to Iowans with health insurance coverage.

House File 2489 requires certain types of private health insurance policies to cover supplemental or diagnostic breast examinations such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ultrasound, or contrast-enhanced mammography. House File 2668 requires public and private health insurance to cover biomarker testing for some cancers and other diseases or conditions. Both bills take effect on January 1, 2025.

Dave Leshtz is the editor of The Prairie Progressive, where this essay first appeared.

Earlier this year, State Representative Josh Turek wrote an excellent Des Moines Register guest column on why “Iowa is not a good place to be disabled.” He cited long waiting lists for in-home and community-based care, severe restrictions on Medicaid eligibility, legislative efforts to dismantle services for special education provided by our Area Education Agencies, and more. Yet this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Iowa also lags in providing community services.

Robin Opsahl covers the state legislature and politics for Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared.

In their final days of the 2024 legislative session, Iowa lawmakers approved $8.9 billion in state spending for the upcoming year, financing the state government and public services. Most of those decisions now await a thumbs up or down from the governor.

Appropriations bills included funding for topics discussed often this session, like increasing pay for Iowa judges, as well as spending cuts to Area Education Agencies (AEAs), the provider of special education and other school support services in Iowa.

Budget bills can also include policy components. This year, language restricting on diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the state’s public universities was passed as part of the education spending bill.

State Representative Adam Zabner being sworn in as a legislator in January 2023

Adam Zabner represents Iowa House district 90, covering part of Iowa City. He delivered remarks on this topic as a point of personal privilege in the Iowa House on April 10; you can listen here.

American democracy is at its best when Americans participate. Unfortunately, Iowa’s Department of Health and Human Services is holding some Iowans back from participating in our elections.

In 1993, Congress, with bipartisan support from Iowa’s federal delegation, passed the National Voter Registration Act to encourage participation. The NVRA is the reason you are asked to register to vote every time you renew your driver’s license.

The bill also requires that Americans be given a chance to register to vote every time they register or renew their registration for Medicaid. Nationally, the NVRA has been a roaring success. In particular, the provisions around Medicaid have helped improve voter registration rates among low-income Americans and people of color, groups that have historically been underrepresented in elections and in government.

Supporters of the Work Without Worry bill lobby at the state capitol on March 12. From left: Derek Fike, State Representative Josh Turek, Jordan True, Julie Russell-Steuart, and Jen Sinkler.

Jordan True chairs the Iowa Democratic Party’s Disability Caucus. He emailed the message enclosed below to Republican members of the Iowa House Appropriations Committee on March 13.

Honorable Representatives of the House Appropriations Committee,

Please support appropriations for HF 2589 Work Without Worry by asking Chair Gary Mohr to assign to a subcommittee and schedule a vote as soon as possible in the Appropriations Committee. Although this bill has survived the funnel, please help employed people with disabilities get this through appropriations, through the House, and onto the Senate by the end of March. 

Heather Sievers is the founder of Advocates for Iowa’s Children and an Altoona mother of a child of rare disabilities. Photo of Heather with her daughter Rowan was provided by the author and published with permission.

I am speaking out to educate our communities and give voice to thousands of families across the state who are begging our Iowa legislators to stop the Area Education Agency (AEA) education reform bill from being passed into law during the 2024 legislative session.

Having spent years building my professional experience in effective health care transformation, performance and process improvement in large systems, I know we are not doing this the right way. We are not taking time to perform a credible and thorough study to determine what reform is needed before enacting a bill. A change of this magnitude cannot be rushed, or it will inevitably fail. The risk is too high to gamble on our children’s well-being and their futures. 

Any harm to our children as a result of the decisions made this legislative session will never be forgiven, nor forgotten. Our integrated AEA system works and is a national treasure. Many states aspire to implement a system like we have, and my personal story demonstrates that our system works. 

Interactive School Nutrition Dashboard created by the Iowa Hunger Coalition

At least four bills that would have helped needy Iowa families feed their children didn’t make it through the state legislature’s first “funnel.”

Most bills not related to taxes or spending are considered dead for the 2024 session if not approved by at least one Iowa House or Senate committee by February 16. Efforts to expand access to meals didn’t receive a subcommittee hearing, let alone consideration by a full committee. That was true even for one school lunch bill with 20 Republican co-sponsors.

Zachary Roth is the national democracy reporter for States Newsroom. Jared Strong is senior reporter for Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared.

Iowa’s health department is failing to comply with the federal requirement to make voter registration accessible to people applying for Medicaid, multiple advocates say, likely leading significant numbers of low-income Iowans to be left off the rolls.

“I would regard this as major noncompliance with an agency’s obligations under the NVRA,” said Brenda Wright, special litigation and policy counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. She was referring to the National Voter Registration Act, the 1993 law that requires state agencies to offer their clients the chance to register to vote. 

The concerns come at a time when Iowa already appears to be struggling to get people on public assistance to register, and as the 2024 election approaches.

Photo provided by the author, showing maternal health advocates advocating for licensure of certified professional midwives during an Iowa House Ways and Means subcommittee meeting in February 2023.

Rachel Bruns is a volunteer advocate for quality maternal health care in Iowa.

This time last year I wrote about five policies that would improve maternal health in Iowa. I’m updating the piece for the 2024 legislative session with a focus on three core priorities. 

Although access to abortion care and contraceptives are critical to maternal and infant health, I do not discuss those topics here. I want to highlight lesser-known aspects of maternal health specific to prenatal, birth, and postpartum care, which receive much less media coverage.

For the 2024 legislative session, I am focusing on three issues I raised last year, which have a strong chance to be enacted. These policies would improve maternal health in Iowa by expanding access to midwives and expanding prenatal care options. I wrote at length in 2021 about how midwives save lives, and it seems like every week a different study or article underscores how the midwifery model of care leads to better outcomes. If you’re interested in diving deeper, one of my favorite resources released in 2023 is this Issue Brief on Maternity Medicaid Strategies from the Maternal Health Hub.

Second in a series on under-covered stories from the Iowa legislature’s 2023 session.

During the seven years of the Iowa GOP trifecta, the majority party has often enacted significant public policy through eleventh-hour appropriations bills. Just before adjourning in 2019, Republicans amended spending bills to change the judicial selection process, restrict medical care for transgender Iowans on Medicaid, and block Planned Parenthood from receiving sex education grants.

A lengthy amendment to a budget bill approved in the closing hours of the 2020 session made it harder for Iowans to vote by mail and sought to restrict some companies from bidding on electric transmission lines projects.

The Iowa Supreme Court sent the legislature a message in March, blocking the 2020 provision on transmission lines, on the grounds that it was likely passed through unconstitutional “logrolling.”

Republican legislators weren’t pleased with the ruling known as LS Power, but seem to have adapted to it. This year’s “standings” appropriations bill was relatively short and focused on spending and code corrections—a far cry from the usual “Christmas tree” featuring unrelated policy items from lawmakers’ wish lists.

Nevertheless, many surprises lurked in other bills that allocated spending for fiscal year 2024, which begins on July 1.

This post focuses on seven provisions that appeared in budget bill amendments published shortly before Iowa House or Senate debate. Most of this policy language never appeared in a stand-alone bill, allowing Republicans to avoid the scrutiny that comes with subcommittee and committee discussions. Democratic legislators had little time to review the proposed budgets before votes on final passage, which mostly fell along party lines.

The biggest stories of the Iowa legislature’s 2023 session are well known. Before adjourning for the year on May 4, historically large Republican majorities in the Iowa House and Senate gave Governor Kim Reynolds almost everything on her wish list. They reshaped K-12 public schools; passed several bills targeting LGBTQ Iowans; enacted new hurdles for Iowans on public assistance; cut property taxes; reorganized state government to increase the power of the governor and “her” attorney general; and undermined the state auditor’s ability to conduct independent audits.

Many other newsworthy stories received little attention during what will be remembered as one of the Iowa legislature’s most influential sessions. This post is the first in a series highlighting lesser-known bills or policies that made it through both chambers in 2023, or failed to reach the governor’s desk.

As the Iowa House and Senate debated one appropriations bill after another last week, Democrats repeatedly objected to plans that imposed status quo budgets or small increases (well below the rate of inflation) on services for disadvantaged Iowans.

Iowans with disabilities or special needs were not a priority in the education and health and human services budgets that top Republican lawmakers negotiated behind closed doors.

The Iowa House and Senate finished work this week on several priority bills for Republicans, and leaders are closer to agreement on the next state budget.

The accelerating pace raises the prospect that the Iowa legislature may adjourn for the year close to the session’s scheduled end date of April 28. Stalemates over policies related to education and COVID-19 vaccines pushed the last two legislative sessions well into overtime; the 2021 session ended on May 19, and last year’s work wrapped up on May 24.

This piece highlights where things stand with high-profile bills approved in either the House or Senate this week, and other legislation that will likely be part of late deal-making. Forthcoming Bleeding Heartland posts will focus on many of those bills separately.

Charles Bruner served in the Iowa legislature from 1978 to 1990 and was founding director of the Child and Family Policy Center from 1989 through 2016. For the last six years, he headed a Health Equity and Young Children initiative focusing on primary child health care for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Democrats prioritize investing in children but don’t stress the importance of parents in raising the next generation. Republicans do the opposite.

The electorate wants both.

Until we make children’s issues part of our political dialogue, we will not do either.

Proposals that would cause thousands of Iowans to lose Medicaid coverage or federal food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) are eligible for floor debate in both the Iowa House and Senate.

Republicans in each chamber’s Health and Human Services Committee changed some provisions in the bills, now numbered House File 613 and Senate File 494, then approved the legislation before the March 3 “funnel” deadline. However, the amended versions would still threaten health care or food assistance for many Iowans who now qualify.

“Medical Malpractice Reform gets Iowa back in the game of recruiting and retaining physicians to care for Iowans!” Governor Kim Reynolds tweeted on February 16. She had just signed House File 161, a bill limiting damages in medical malpractice lawsuits.

Reynolds waited a long time for that moment. Two years running, similar proposals failed to reach her desk for lack of support in the GOP-controlled state House.

The bill signing capped one of the most dramatic debates in recent Iowa political memory.

It’s rare for more than a handful of Republican lawmakers to go on record against any bill that’s a priority for leadership. Not only did seventeen GOP lawmakers oppose passage of House File 161, six members of the majority party explained their objections during the hours-long debates in the House and Senate on February 8.

In addition to exposing divisions within Republican ranks, some remarks from the legislative proceedings may become important if the new law is challenged in court.

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

Sometimes it’s easy to understand legislative proposals. Other times, not so much. House File 3, filed early in the Iowa legislature’s 2023 session, falls in the second category. To understand its potential effect on needy people, take a quick look at two preexisting food programs whose nutritional goals differ.

First, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the federal program once called food stamps. It exists to help low-income households and those on Medicaid buy groceries.

Second, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (commonly known as WIC) aims to meet the specific nutritional needs of its designated recipients. WIC doesn’t allow recipients to use those funds for meat, sliced cheese, butter, flour, or fresh produce.

Rachel Bruns is a volunteer advocate for quality maternal health care in Iowa.

A 2022 report from March of Dimes shows that “36% of counties nationwide — largely in the Midwest and South — constitute ‘maternity care deserts,’ meaning they have no obstetric hospitals or birth centers and no obstetric providers.” While their report does not provide state rankings, you can see whether your county classifies as being a maternity care desert here. Additionally, a report from Stacker in June 2022 ranked Iowa eleventh on a list of “states where the most people live in maternal health care deserts.”

Even if your area has maternal health care providers (OBGYNs, family physicians, midwives), finding quality care is another challenge facing pregnant and postpartum individuals in both urban and rural areas. I’ve discussed some of those problems in previous articles for this website. 

The good news is relatively low-cost, evidence-based solutions are available to make maternal health care more accessible in Iowa, which would improve outcomes. I have identified and prioritized opportunities that should be bipartisan based on successes in other states.

Note: I am not including abortion access in these recommendations, since the procedure continues to be legal in Iowa, the media regularly cover this topic, and several organizations advocate on this issue. This article from Commonwealth Fund explains how states with restrictive abortion laws have worse maternal health outcomes.

Sue Dinsdale leads Health Care For America NOW in Iowa.

This month Medicare and Medicaid celebrate their 57th Anniversary. These two biggest government health insurance programs in the nation were created by President Lyndon B. Johnson and the Democratic-controlled Congress in 1965. Together, they provide coverage and services to more than 150 million people in the United States, including 637,388 Medicare enrollees and 812,017 Medicaid enrollees in Iowa.

Medicaid has been a lifeline and resource for workers, families, state budgets and people of all ages. Whether it’s regular preventive care, prenatal or maternity care for new moms, addiction treatment in the swelling opioid epidemic or rapid response to national crisis like hurricanes, terrorist attacks and epidemics, Medicaid is a fundamental pillar of the American health care system that we all depend on.

Julie Russell-Steuart is a printmaker and activist who chairs the Iowa Democratic Party’s Disability Caucus.

Glenn Hurst is a rural doctor in the small southwestern Iowa town of Minden and a founding member of Indivisble Iowa, whose activism helped elect U.S. Representative Cindy Axne. He faces Abby Finkenauer and Mike Franken in the June 7 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate.

Dr. Hurst has earned our endorsement for his strong experience advocating for people with disabilities and because he is laser focused on improving the lives of the American people in crucial ways.

Iowa’s health and human services budget for the coming fiscal year includes a $500,000 appropriation for a new “maternal health” initiative modeled on an ineffective, wasteful Texas program.

But the bill, negotiated by House and Senate Republicans and approved on party-line votes in both chambers May 23, does not extend postpartum coverage for Iowans on Medicaid, a documented way to reduce maternal mortality.

Sue Dinsdale is the director of Iowa Citizen Action Network and leads the Health Care For America and Lower Drug Prices NOW campaigns in Iowa.

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley got it right when speaking about efforts to lower prescription costs. He acknowledged the “difficulty of passing something like this in a Republican Congress,” adding, “If we want to reduce drug prices, then we need to do it now.”

For years we’ve been hearing members of Congress promise to tackle rising drug prices without any action. Prescription drugs and the outrageous price of medicine has made reform a top issue that attracts bipartisan support. A recent national poll indicated that 91 percent of voters consider lowering drug prices a very important issue in the upcoming election, ranking it above COVID-19 worries. 

RJ Miller: I chose to run to take the voices of my community and make their voices louder.

I am a community activist who’s been organizing in Des Moines since 2019 around the issues of racial discrimination, civil and human rights, and urban violence.  Originally a victim of gun violence in Minneapolis, I overcome the obstacles of gang activity and incarceration in order to inspire and support my community in a collective effort to defeat the issues that plague the inner city. 

My mission is to uplift, empower, and transform the Des Moines community through restorative justice, empowering the youth, and investing in solutions that will combat the forces of colonization and oppression at large.

Matt Sinovic is the executive director of Progress Iowa, a research, communications, and issue advocacy organization with a network of more than 75,000 across the state and country.

Iowans work hard to take care of our families. We want leaders who will do what’s right so that we can do our best. But for the past decade, the needs of working families have been ignored by Corporate Kim Reynolds.

Fewer Iowans are working today than when Corporate Kim Reynolds took office. There aren’t enough workers to keep schools, hospitals, and small businesses open. But the governor continues to double down on the policies that created her workforce crisis. The ones that give the wealthy and big businesses tax breaks, while taking money away from our public schools, public safety, and health care services.

Glenn Hurst is a family physician in southwest Iowa and a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate.

Several years ago, my wife and I had a friend our family called Grandma Ruth. Ruth was special to us. She was one of the first people we brought my newborn daughter to meet. She had taken a special interest in our kids and was always present for their big events. Often, we would pick her up and bring her to our house for football parties and holidays. She included us in the celebration of her life events as well. She was estranged from her own family and just became part of ours.

I learned a lot from observing how Ruth navigated her world. She had learned how to use senior transportation services to get to doctor appointments as well as to the grocery store or other activities. She knew how to arrange Meals on Wheels and how to keep current with her disability to remain eligible for services she absolutely needed.

Jenn Wolff of Waverly is a member of Upgrade Medicaid.

Iowans with all different kinds of disabilities, their families, caregivers, and allies have spoken out about the need for changes to Medicaid since the Branstad-Reynolds administration privatized the program more than five years ago.

The U.S. Department of Justice report on state-run institutions in Glenwood and Woodward, released in December 2021, provides additional evidence of pervasive bias and segregation, caused by Iowa’s failure to invest in Home and Community Based Services.

My question to all Iowa elected officials and legislators is, why does legislation seeking to improve Medicaid die without discussion or opportunity for public comment?

Former State Representative Mary Ann Hanusa finally gave up her Congressional ambitions and announced on January 5 she’s running for state auditor. She won’t face any competition in the Republican primary, coming out of the gate with endorsements from Governor Kim Reynolds, Senator Chuck Grassley, and Senator Joni Ernst.

Democrat Rob Sand won the 2018 state auditor’s race by 660,169 votes to 601,320 for GOP incumbent Mary Mosiman (50.9 percent to 46.4 percent). Turnout set a modern midterm record for Iowa that year. Participation could be far lower in 2022—perhaps 1.1 million to 1.2 million voters.

Whether Hanusa emerges as a strong challenger will become more clear as her campaign unfolds, but here are some initial thoughts.

The Iowa Department of Human Services (DHS) is appealing a Polk County District Court ruling that found the state law and policy designed to deny Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming surgery are unconstitutional. The state filed notice of its intent to appeal on December 17, near the end of its 30-day window to do so following the District Court’s decision in November.

The Iowa Attorney General’s office had no comment on the appeal. Governor Kim Reynolds’ office also had no comment on why the governor is determined to prevent transgender Iowans on Medicaid from receiving medically necessary care approved by their doctors.

Plaintiffs Aiden Vasquez and Mika Covington have been waiting for years to obtain surgery and first challenged the state law in court within weeks of Reynolds signing the provision into law in May 2019.

For Aiden Vasquez and Mika Covington, the news was life-changing. Polk County District Court Judge William Kelly ruled on November 19 that Iowa’s law designed to deny Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming surgery “violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution.”

He ordered the Iowa Department of Human Services to change a longstanding regulation “excluding coverage for sex reassignment surgery” and said the agency must apply the revised rule to allow “transgender individuals coverage under Iowa Medicaid for medically necessary gender affirming surgery for the treatment of Gender Dysphoria and other relevant diagnoses.”

Vasquez and Covington are transgender Iowans who qualify for Medicaid and have been unable to obtain the health care they need for years. They have been seeking legal redress since soon after Governor Kim Reynolds signed the discriminatory statute in May 2019.

Naturally, not everyone was happy with what the ACLU of Iowa’s legal director Rita Bettis Austen described as a “historic win for civil rights in Iowa.” Soon after the court ruling was published on November 22, Reynolds’ spokesperson Alex Murphy told reporters, “The governor’s office is disappointed in today’s decision and disagrees with the district court’s ruling on Medicaid coverage for transgender reassignment surgeries.”

Reynolds echoed the sentiment when speaking to reporters on November 23: “Of course we were disappointed with the ruling and disagree […] My legal team is looking at it. There will be more to come later on. We’re still looking through it and trying to determine what our options are.”

She should stop fighting this battle.

Tax and budget policy expert Randy Bauer was Governor Tom Vilsack’s budget director for six and a half years and has evaluated tax and revenue policies for many state and local governments.

In late September, Governor Kim Reynolds announced that the State of Iowa had a $1.24 billion surplus for fiscal year 2021, which ended on June 30. In a news release, she and the state’s interim budget director credited their own fiscal management for the surplus. Top Iowa Republican lawmakers have echoed that message.

Was it really all that praiseworthy? I’d suggest not. Here’s why this record surplus was not the big deal Reynolds and her minions made it out to be.

The short special election campaign in Iowa House district 37 has been a costly affair, as expected. Disclosures filed last week show the Iowa Democratic Party has spent $306,470.21 on behalf of Andrea Phillips, while the Republican Party of Iowa has spent $234,327.12 supporting Mike Bousselot.

As is typical for targeted Iowa legislative races, the bulk of the spending has gone toward television and digital advertising: roughly $285,000 on the Democratic side and just under $230,000 from Republicans.

Bleeding Heartland analyzed the introductory ads for Phillips and Bousselot here. During the last two weeks of the campaign, I’ve seen more negative advertising about both candidates on Des Moines-based broadcast and cable television. The difference is that the Democratic ads highlight truthful claims about Bousselot’s past work, whereas the Republican ads are wholly false–much like the spots they ran against Phillips in 2020.

Approximately 702,800 Iowans were enrolled in some version of the Medicaid program last month, up by roughly 100,000 since the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020, according to analysis by Charles Gaba at the ACA Signups website.

The biggest increase was in the Iowa Health and Wellness Plan, the state’s version of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. Gaba’s analysis indicates that some 225,300 Iowans were participating in that plan as of May 2021, up from about 177,200 people fourteen months earlier.

Enrollment in traditional Medicaid increased by a smaller rate from about 425,000 in March 2020 to some 477,500 last month. The federal government recently released statistics on state level Medicaid enrollments from July 2019 through December 2020. Gaba’s estimates for 2021 are based on monthly reports published by the Iowa Department of Human Services, adjusted to compensate for how closely the state’s numbers tracked with the federal figures for 2020.

Gaba commented on his website,

This post first appeared on Laura Crossett’s website The New Rambler. -promoted by Laura Belin

Dear Governor Reynolds:

It is my understanding that you have decided to discontinue additional federal unemployment payments to Iowans who lost their jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic because you want people to get back to work. As one of those Iowans, I’m writing to you because I would very much like to go back to work, but I’m having some difficulty figuring out how I might do so.

I have a child who suffers from significant mental illness. As I know both mental health services and child care are interests of yours, I thought perhaps you might have some advice.

The Iowa House and Senate adjourned late in the evening on May 19 after finishing most of their work for this year. (Lawmakers will almost certainly come back for a special session to consider new maps of Iowa’s legislative and Congressional districts.)

In the coming days, Bleeding Heartland will closely examine several bills that passed in the late session rush. For now, I want to review the legislation that by some minor miracle didn’t make it to Governor Kim Reynolds’ desk, in spite of support from powerful interests.

All of these bills are likely to return in some form during the 2022 session, so don’t celebrate too soon. House Republicans were unable to pass a “water quality” bill backed by agricultural groups in 2017. But the Iowa Farm Bureau and its allies spent the interim chipping away at the GOP holdouts. The bill sailed through the House early in the 2018 session. The same scenario could play out with any of the proposals discussed below.

The governor signed this bill on May 20. Original post follows.

“I look forward to signing this important legislation into law!” Governor Kim Reynolds tweeted on May 6, after the Iowa House and Senate approved a bill purportedly banning “vaccine passports.”

House File 889 fits a pattern of Republican bills that are best described as solutions in search of a problem. No state or local government agency intends to issue COVID-19 vaccine passports, nor are Iowa-based businesses rushing to require that customers show proof of coronavirus vaccinations.

A “message” bill can be useful politically, if it pleases a constituency Republicans need in the next election. The odd thing about this last-minute push is that Iowa’s most vocal vaccine skeptics don’t support the bill heading to the governor’s desk. On the contrary, they’re demanding a veto in the name of freedom.

Two years ago this week, on the day before the Iowa legislature completed its work for 2019, Republicans added two new discriminatory provisions to the state’s health and human services budget. Both code sections quickly spawned litigation. Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit against language designed to exclude the organization from sex education grants is now pending before the Iowa Supreme Court, after a District Court found the prohibition violated the state constitution’s equal protection guarantee.

A case challenging language that authorized discrimination against transgender Iowans on Medicaid never got that far. But on April 22, the ACLU of Iowa and the national ACLU LGBTQ & HIV Project filed a new lawsuit in Polk County District Court.

A longstanding effort by Iowa Senate Republicans to reduce the number of Iowans receiving various forms of public assistance got a quiet boost last week from Governor Kim Reynolds.

For the first time, the governor’s draft human services budget included provisions that would create asset tests for federal food assistance and require the Iowa Department of Human Services to establish a new “eligibility verification system” for Medicaid and several other public assistance programs.

State Senator Jason Schultz has pushed similar legislation for several years running. Each session, Senate Republicans have approved the bills, which died in the House Human Resources Committee (see here and here).

The U.S. House and Senate on December 21 approved a $2.3 trillion package to fund the federal government through September 30, 2021 and provide approximately $900 billion in economic stimulus or relief connected to the coronavirus pandemic.

No one in either chamber had time to read the legislation, which was nearly 5,600 pages long, before voting on it. Statements released by Iowans in Congress, which I’ve enclosed below, highlight many of its key provisions. The unemployment and direct payments to families are clearly insufficient to meet the needs of millions of struggling Americans. Senate Republicans blocked aid to state and local governments, many of which are facing budget shortfalls. President-elect Joe Biden has vowed to push for a much larger economic stimulus package early next year.

The legislation headed to President Donald Trump’s desk includes some long overdue changes, such as new limits on “surprise billing” by health care providers for emergency care and some out-of-network care.

This commentary is the collective work of three Iowa Democratic Party county chairs: Brett W. Copeland in Dickinson County, Mitch Day in Clay County, and Laura Hoffman in Emmet County. -promoted by Laura Belin

State Senator Randy Feenstra has promised Iowans that he will be riding shotgun to President Donald Trump’s second term agenda. His devastating legislative record on health care and mental health shows that he will make the perfect Congressional lackey.

Feenstra has been at the center of the worst ideas in the Iowa Senate. He voted against bills to improve oversight of Iowa’s Medicaid program and helped orchestrate a plan to allow Iowans to buy junk health insurance policies. He pushed to end block grants that ensured counties could provide decent mental health services, fund law enforcement, and keep taxes low.

Eric Donat: “It’s important for inclusion to show people with disabilities in all possible roles – not just in disability-specific ones.” -promoted by Laura Belin

I’m excited to be part of the new leadership on The Iowa Democratic Party Disability Caucus as vice chair. I am Eric Donat of Waterloo and Black Hawk County.

I got my start in politics through advocacy training at the Center for Independent Living in Waterloo, Iowans with Disabilities in Action, and the Iowa Developmental Disabilities Council. Consumers at the center were connected to state legislators via our work on systems change advocacy.

Through being an advocate, I supported legislation making it easier for people with disabilities, particularly those using wheelchairs, to travel about in their communities. I also supported reorganizing Iowa’s counties into today’s mental health service regions. In addition, I advocated against privatizing Medicaid in Iowa.