KanCare gets federal reprieve for one year
The federal government has granted a one-year extension of
Following an on-site visit a year ago, the
In a letter dated Friday, CMS approved the request to extend the program through next year, as long as the state follows a list of directives, including continued compliance with a corrective action plan it submitted following the denial. The letter says the state has to apply for its full five-year reapplication by the end of the year.
"This temporary extension allows
KanCare was rolled out
The reviews have been mixed. In a statement Monday, Lt. Gov.
"Since KanCare's implementation, health outcomes have improved for thousands of Kansans," Colyer said. "Emergency room visits are down, routine checkups are increasing, and Kansans are spending less time in the hospital and more time taking advantage of preventative care."
Health care advocates have complained of reduced care and long delays getting approval for the program. They said the extension approval was not a surprise, but they hoped concerns they raised about KanCare would be resolved when the state reapplies.
"What we had been hearing is that the Trump administration has been assuring the state that they would get the extension," said
CMS's initial denial came in the final days of former President
Weisgrau said the program would have been thrown into chaos had CMS denied the extension with the program expiring in less than two months. He said he hoped complaints raised in CMS' review last year would be resolved before a full reauthorization was approved.
"I still hear a lot of the same complaints from advocates and providers that I heard before," Weisgrau said.
"There's no oversight of the program and there's massive conflicts of interest with case management by the (managed care organizations), with huge incentives to deny care," Gatewood said.
Managed care organizations are the companies that provide health insurance through Medicaid.
Weisgrau and Gatewood said they would like to see targeted case managers used to help recipients access their benefits and a robust ombudsman office to handle complaints with the system. Weisgrau said he would also like to see the program become more transparent to the public and less bureaucratic for health care providers who are trying to get paid by the system.
Nursing home providers have long complained KanCare's eligibility system made it difficult to do business. Residents' Medicaid applications waited long periods for approval while nursing homes provided uncompensated care.
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