By Mike Shields
KHI News Service
TOPEKA, Dec. 13 The committee that oversees the Kansas Health Policy Authority reaffirmed today that it wants the agency”s
21-point health reform package
introduced for consideration in the coming legislative session, but members also signaled they weren”t optimistic the full package would make it into law.
“This has a lot of costs and there is no way the state can afford increased costs. This discussion is very good. But in terms of practicality, you”re going to have a hard time,” Sen. Roger Reitz, a Manhattan Republican and physician, said after hearing the agency”s top officials describing elements of the reform plan first unveiled Nov. 1.
According to Alan Conroy, director of the Kansas Legislative Research Department, the health reform plan would cost an estimated $30 million its first year. That cost would increase to $40.6 million in the second year and $47.1 million in the third.
Researchers also reported that if the Legislature approved the health reform plan but failed to adopt the proposed tobacco tax increase included in it, the state treasury would be about $19 million in the red
by
fiscal year 2011.
If the tobacco tax were approved along with the health reform package and all other spending remained constant, Conroy predicted a fiscal 2011 ending balance of about $173 million or about 2.6 percent of state general fund spending.
Other reservations about the reform package were expressed as members of the Joint Health Policy Oversight Committee talked about the best way to introduce it as legislation.
“My concern is that when you have something like the cigarette tax included in the bill you can have the whole thing killed because people object to just one thing,” said Sen. Susan Wagle, R-Wichita, as the committee debated whether the reform package should be offered as a single, large bill or several smaller measures.
Marcia Nielsen, the health policy authority”s executive director, said the agency preferred the plan be introduced as a single bill because the reform package”s many elements were meant to be a multi-faceted, but integrated, approach to improving the overall health of Kansans.
But committee members expressed reservations about key elements of the plan, namely the planks calling for a tobacco tax increase and a “premium assistance” program that would expand health insurance subsidies for poor Kansans.
“It is too vague for many of us where premium assistance is going,” said Sen. Jim Barnett, R-Emporia, the committee”s chairman and a strong advocate of health reform.
He and other members said they preferred the package be introduced as multiple bills to better assure something would be passed and to encourage proper study of the plan’s various proposals by legislators.
“Tax, insurance, Medicaid, smoking ban. There”s enough there (in the reform plan) for multiple committees,” said Rep. Brenda Landwehr, R-Wichita. “There”s not one committee in the House that would have the time to do due diligence on a bill that big.”
She said putting all the reform proposals into a single measure also would likely result in the legislation being referred to more than one committee, a procedural move that often spells death for a bill.
“For most of us, double referral means D.O.A.,” Landwehr said.
The Joint Health Policy Oversight Committee settled the question by voting to have the health policy authority work with the Revisor of Statutes Office to craft bills to be introduced by the agency, not the joint committee. Members said they wanted the various bills divided along subject lines, perhaps as four or five separate bills.
In other action Thursday, the committee heard:
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An update on the status of various state and private efforts to standardize and share electronic health records and other data.
*
A
briefing prepared by the Kansas Health Institute on what other states are doing to reform their Medicaid programs.
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An update from Robin Kempf, the health policy authority”s new inspector general.
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Recommendations from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation for combating prescription drug abuse.
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A status report on the state”s safety net clinics.
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Health insurance reform recommendations presented by Tom Bryon of the Kansas Association of Health Underwriters.
-Mike Shields is a staff writer for KHI News Service, which specializes in coverage of health issues facing Kansans. He can be reached at
mshields@khi.org
or at 785-233-5443, ext. 123.