The Trump administration will not allow Kansas to impose limits on how many years someone can be enrolled in the Medicaid program.
The state had requested that people on Medicaid be allowed to stay in the program for no more than three years and then be dropped from the program. Several other states have made similar requests, and the Trump administration’s decision for Kansas indicates it will reject similar proposals.
“We are determined to make sure that the Medicaid program remains a safety net for those that need it most,” Seema Verma, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said Monday at the American Hospital Association annual meeting. “To this end, we have determined that we will not approve Kansas’ recent request to place a lifetime limit on Medicaid benefits for some beneficiaries. We seek to create a pathway out of poverty, but we also understand that people’s circumstances change, and we must ensure that our programs are sustainable and available to them when they need and qualify for them.”
Republican Gov. Jeff Colyer said he and state officials were no longer pursuing lifetime caps on Medicaid, a decision announced in late April.
“The decision to remove lifetime caps was made after a series of discussions with CMS in which they indicated they would be unable to approve the measure,” Colyer said.
Verma said the Trump administration would continue to allow states to implement other requirements, known as “community engagement” by the administration, that certain Medicaid beneficiaries work or train for work as a condition of staying enrolled in the program. Kentucky, Indiana and Arkansas already have had waivers approved that would allow them to implement the provision, and Verma said in her speech that she would announce another approval later this week.
[Related: Trump’s new guidelines: Get a job or volunteer if you want Medicaid]
“We have seven more applications and have heard from a number of additional states, including states with governors from both political parties, about their interest in community engagement,” she said.
Kansas also is pursuing work requirements, and Colyer said Monday that he was encouraged by the administration’s position on the policy.
Several states have sought to implement the programs in order to help people move out of the Medicaid program and into a job where they would receive private healthcare coverage. Under Obamacare, all states were supposed to enroll people making less than roughly $16,000 a year onto the Medicaid program, but a Supreme Court decision made the provision optional. The federal government pays for 100 percent of the initial cost of expansion but gradually reduces that support to 90 percent by 2020, which will mean billions of dollars more in state spending.
As part of a cost-cutting measure, states that have expanded and that have not expanded are searching for various changes to the program, including work requirements, lifetime limits, or restrictions on which medications will be covered.
