Month: January 2018

by Jim McLean, Kansas News Service

Plans for KanCare 2.0, the proposal to keep management of the state’s Medicaid program in private hands for years to come while adding new eligibility restrictions, halted Wednesday.

At least that’s what Republican Gov. Sam Brownback indicated in a mid-day news release, which said the plan was being scrapped after lawmakers worried about cost increases nearing $100 million a year.

Critics reacted quickly, insisting that the administration’s proposal to extend the current KanCare program by three years while adding some of the same eligibility restrictions included in the 2.0 proposal didn’t amount to much of a retreat by the administration.

In particular, they objected to the administration’s plan to push forward with plans to add a work requirement.

“This requirement would create costly and burdensome administrative red tape for enrollees, providers, and businesses and will still require federal approval,” David Jordan, director of a foundation-funded coalition of health advocates, said in a release.

The recent approval by federal officials of Kentucky’s work requirement has already spawned a lawsuit, Jordan said.

“It is unclear how the administration proposes to pay for these additional administrative burdens and the lengthy and costly legal process likely to follow,” Jordan said. “Rather than confuse and complicate the situation, the administration should officially withdraw KanCare 2.0 (and improve) the current KanCare program.”

The governor’s at-least-partial surrender on the fight came after key lawmakers a week before told the Kansas News Service that problems in KanCare as it already exists need fixing before they’d go along with any effort to lock-in substantial changes in a new program.

KanCare launched in 2013, hiring three private companies to manage the billions the state spends on Medicaid to provide health care to the poor and disabled.

Following objections from top Democrats in the Legislature, Senate President Susan Wagle, Majority Leader Jim Denning and other Republicans publicly signaled their reluctance to back KanCare 2.0.

Their resistance, those Republicans said, came out of frustration with the existing version of KanCare, its backlog of applications and criticism that it shut off people from health coverage that the state intended to cover.

Acknowledging the failure of past efforts to clear the backlog, Brownback said, Jeff Andersen, the newly appointed secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, is instituting new get-tough measures to deal with the problem.

“The state is in the process of issuing a letter of noncompliance to the contractor in charge of the eligibility clearinghouse where applications are processed,” the release said.

Brownback’s announcement Wednesday also attributed the decision to set aside the KanCare renewal to Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer. He’s a plastic surgeon and a candidate for governor who led the state’s transition to managed care and saw KanCare 2.0 as a way to preserve his signature policy accomplishment.

The state had been seeking federal approval to renew KanCare for another four years, effective Jan. 1, 2019, just days before a new governor takes office. That request will now be withdrawn so that the state can instead seek approval to extend the current program by three years, Brownback said.

In their news release, Brownback and Colyer said the administration would either extend current contracts with three insurance companies handling Medicaid for Kansas or allow them and the companies who were preparing KanCare 2.0 bids to compete for new contracts.

Jim McLean is managing director of the Kansas News Service, a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio covering health, education and politics. You can reach him on Twitter @jmcleanks. Kansas News Service stories and photos may be republished at no cost with proper attribution and a link back to the original post. kcur.org

See more at http://kcur.org/post/brownback-dumps-kancare-20-sort.

by Jim McLean, Kansas News Service

Four years ago, Greg Orman made an independent and notable challenge to Republican U.S. Pat Roberts’ run for re-election.

Now the wealthy businessman has his sights set on the governor’s office, contending that voter frustration with the two-party system gives him a path to victory in November.

“What is clear to me is that voters want real alternatives,” Orman said Wednesday on a conference call with reporters.

His bid for the governorship holds the potential to alter the dynamics of the general election.

Depending on the analysis you choose, he could capture just enough votes from moderates to sink a Democratic nominee. Alternatively, his appeal to the political middle of the electorate might weaken the eventual Republican candidate and swing the race for a Democrat.

Or, in Orman’s calculus, he could win the race for himself by appealing to voters weary of old party-bound dogma and eager for fresh-slate ideas.

“They want leaders who put their needs ahead of the needs of either major political party,” he said. “They want to actually be able to vote based on a positive vision for the future, not vote against a candidate based on hate and fear and we intend to give them that choice.”

Maybe so, but for the moment, conventional political wisdom holds that Orman’s candidacy could tilt the race to the Republicans if they nominate a conservative such as Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who, like President Donald Trump, commands a solid base of loyal voters.

Orman raised more than $400,000 in a month after setting up a campaign committee in December. That, coupled with his performance in the U.S. Senate race in 2014 that essentially forced the withdrawal of a Democratic challenge to Roberts, makes him a formidable wild card.

In the Senate race, he centered his campaign around the idea that he’d not be beholden to leaders of either party. It’s those politicians, he argued, who gum up the works in the Beltway and block changes in government that most Americans want.

“That desire that we saw in 2014 has only increased in 2018,” Orman said.

Orman’s political positions fell roughly in the middle. He saw no point in trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act when President Barack Obama was still in office, but that he would have opposed its original passage. He wanted increased border security, but also argued for a path to citizenship for immigrants in the country illegally. He supported access to abortion and same-sex marriage.

After his loss to Roberts, Orman penned the book “Declaration of Independents.”

With his ambitions cast toward Topeka, Orman looks again like a candidate of the center. Though he hasn’t fleshed out a campaign platform, he has joined moderate Republicans and Democrats in condemning Gov. Sam Brownback’s economic policies, in particular the income tax cuts that sent state revenues crashing.

“Governor Brownback’s biggest mistake was not acknowledging when his policy wasn’t working and changing course,” Orman said.

Business leaders, he said, understand the importance of learning from their mistakes.
“Unfortunately that was a lesson and a concept that Governor Brownback apparently never learned,” Orman said.

That was as close as he came to talking policy specifics with reporters Wednesday.

Because he’s never held public office, there’s little to judge him by. He worked for the presidential campaign of President George H.W. Bush — arguably a moderate and certainly an establishment figure far removed from the politics of, say, President Donald Trump. He was also involved in Ross Perot’s bid for the presidency — an outsider’s crusade from decades ago.

Orman’s business career took off when he founded a company that designed energy-efficient lighting for commercial customers. That company later became a subsidiary of Kansas City Power and Light run by Orman. He later started a private equity firm that backed a boxing equipment manufacture and the Ripple glass recycler.

Over the years he’s given money to candidates in both parties, including Obama and Hillary Clinton and Todd Akin, a far-right Republican who lost to Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill after suggesting that rape victims can resist the risk of pregnancy from an attack.

Because he won’t be the nominee of a party, Orman will need to gather the signatures of at least 5,000 registered Kansas voters to get his name on the general election ballot.

Josh Svaty, a former state lawmaker and onetime Kansas agriculture secretary, on Wednesday invited Orman in a news release to join Democratic forums “so that Kansans can compare and contrast his ideas. … I’m sure some of the Republican candidates for governor would make the same offer.”

Jim McLean is managing director of the Kansas News Service, a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio covering health, education and politics. You can reach him on Twitter @jmcleanks. Kansas News Service stories and photos may be republished at no cost with proper attribution and a link back to the original post. kcur.org
See more at http://kcur.org/post/orman-kansas-voter-irritation-parties-opens-my-path-be-governor