Kansas Gov. announces revamping of Medicaid

Brownback's plan would put nearly all Medicaid enrollees into private, managed-care plans.

Kaiser Health News/NPR/Kansas Health Institute: Kansas Announces Sweeping Medicaid Restructuring
Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback announced a major overhaul of the state's Medicaid program today, which would put nearly all Medicaid recipients into private, managed-care plans.  While low-income families are currently in such plans, elderly and disabled Kansans receive care through a fee-for-service system (Thompson and Shields, 11/8).

Kansas City Star: Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback Outlines Medicaid Changes
 Under the new system, which would be called KanCare, private companies would be asked to tender bids for contracts to manage care for some Medicaid recipients. The system is expected to begin operating at the start of the state's fiscal year on July 1, 2012. Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer, a surgeon and former state senator, said there would be financial incentives written into the contracts to encourage the providers to reduce costs and improve the health of Medicaid recipients (11/9).

Kansas Health Institute News: Brownback Announces Managed Care For All In Medicaid
Tom Laing, executive director of Interhab, a group that represents most of the community-based programs that serve the developmentally disabled, offered scathing criticism of for-profit managed care companies in general and predicted that making the group's community providers sign contracts with three different insurance companies would be disruptive to a stable and efficient system that has been in place at least 15 years (Shields, 11/8).