by Andy Marso, KHI News Service
A compromise is emerging on a bill that would change the legislative committee that oversees KanCare, the state’s privatized Medicaid program.
Senate Bill 121 as written lessens the minority party’s influence on the KanCare committee by removing members appointed from the House and Senate budget committees.
Health care consumer groups say budget committee representation should remain, regardless of party affiliation.
Rep. John Wilson, a Democrat from Lawrence, said he thinks both parties are receptive to changing the bill to keep the budget committee appointees while still giving Republicans more seats to reflect their House and Senate supermajorities.
“I don’t think there’s general opposition to the idea that the committee needs to be proportionate to what the (House and Senate) bodies are,” Wilson said.
Republicans currently hold 74 percent of House seats and 80 percent of Senate seats but only seven of the 11 seats — or 64 percent — on the Robert G. (Bob) Bethell Joint Committee on Home and Community Based Services and KanCare Oversight.
Right now both the majority and minority parties can appoint two people from the House and Senate budget committees to the KanCare committee.
Senate Bill 121 would remove those appointments in favor of allowing more proportionate appointments from the chambers as a whole. It also would allow the KanCare committee two more meeting days to do its work.
The bill passed the Senate 30-10 largely on party lines before moving to Monday’s hearing in the House Health and Human Services Committee.
Leaders of the Kansas Health Consumer Coalition and Kansas Advocates for Better Care applauded the move to expand the committee meetings but opposed the removal of the budget committee representatives.
Sean Gatewood, interim executive director of the consumer coalition, said the committee needs some budget background because oversight of fiscal issues, such as cost-benefit analyses, is central to its mission.
“It is, by far, the majority of what the committee is tasked to do,” Gatewood said.
Rep. Scott Schwab, a Republican from Olathe, asked Gatewood if his group’s concerns would be addressed if budget committee representation were restored but with a different partisan breakdown. Gatewood said it would.
Monday’s hearing ended without any action on the bill.
The nonprofit KHI News Service is an editorially independent initiative of the Kansas Health Institute and a partner in the Heartland Health Monitor reporting collaboration. All stories and photos may be republished at no cost with proper attribution and a link back to KHI.org when a story is reposted online.
– See more at: http://www.khi.org/news/article/possibility-for-compromise-on-kancare-committee-overhaul#sthash.f3mQyAhI.dpuf