Statement from the Alliance on CMS’s rejection of lifetime limits on KanCare

Statement from the Alliance for Healthy Kansas on the CMS decision to reject lifetime limits on KanCare:

The Alliance for a Healthy Kansas fully supports the decision announced today by Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), to reject the Colyer administration’s request to impose lifetime limits on eligibility for Medicaid (known as KanCare in Kansas).

Along with the Kansas legislature’s recent budget proviso to require that substantive changes in KanCare eligibility receive legislative approval, the Alliance believes that the most harmful provisions of the state’s so-called KanCare 2.0 proposal will not be implemented.

“Limiting KanCare eligibility to a lifetime maximum of three years, as proposed by the Colyer administration in KanCare 2.0, would have done severe damage to the program’s ability to act as safety net for the most vulnerable Kansans,” said Sheldon Weisgrau, interim executive director of the Alliance for a Healthy Kansas. “Patients can now be assured that an arbitrary bureaucratic time limit would not end their health care coverage in the middle of a critical course of treatment. Patients’ needs change throughout their lives and the programs they depend on should have the flexibility to meet these changing needs.”

The Alliance now looks forward to working with the Colyer administration to improve the operations of the KanCare program and ensure that it can meet the needs of the Kansans who depend on it. We believe the most effective way to ensure the available resources to improve the program is to expand it to cover the 150,000 hardworking Kansans who now fall into the KanCare coverage gap.

For more information, please contact Sheldon Weisgrau, Interim Executive Director, at 785-408-8008.