Feds should reject renewal of KanCare

I’ve spent my entire professional life fighting for disability justice as a teacher, a Kansas state legislator, a disability service executive, and an adviser to two presidential administrations. I also have brother with developmental disabilities.

When I look at the conditions for people with disabilities in my home state of Kansas, I feel immense sadness and shock over the deterioration of its human services safety net over the course of the past several years.

Kansas was a once a beacon of hope and best practice. However, under the current administration, much of that progress has been sacrificed as Gov. Sam Brownback and his legislative minions decimated the safety net by destroying the state’s revenue base. They turned the state’s Medicaid program over to three for-profit insurance companies to run as a business proposition, rather than a health or human-service entity.

What emerged was a poorly designed and even worse managed KanCare program.

In place of care and compassion, many families who have loved ones with disabilities now face reductions in service and reimbursements, waiting lists, decisions made by insurance companies that focus on profit not care, and the closing of health-care systems that can’t afford not to be paid for months on end.

This fall, Kansas will be negotiating with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), as the Brownback administration seeks to renew the federal government’s approval of KanCare and its administration of the state’s Medicaid program. I hope CMS rejects the KanCare renewal request and demands extensive reforms from the state of Kansas to return its safety net to health.

The nation has been watching the Kansas social-service system experiment that has failed. Now the nation looks to how KanCare can be fixed, if at all.

This story was originally published October 16, 2016 at 5:01 AM with the headline "Feds should reject renewal of KanCare."