By Barbara Hollingsworth, Topeka Capital-Journal, April 08, 2010
The Kansas Supreme Court on Thursday said it lacked jurisdiction to take up a lawsuit filed on behalf of Kansans with disabilities.
The action leaves open the door for litigation to be filed in a lower district court as groups representing the disabled reel from a 10 percent cut in Medicaid reimbursements.
"We are looking at our options now of what our next step might be," said Rod Murrow, a Lenexa attorney who filed the litigation.
The case stems from a 10 percent cut to funding for Medicaid reimbursements — money that Gov. Mark Parkinson said he wants to see restored even as lawmakers battle a budget gap now exceeding $400 million. He called restoring the funds "critical."
"That's probably the single area of state funding that I stay awake at night thinking about," Parkinson said Thursday.
The 10 percent cut, which was implemented in January, eliminates $22.7 million in state funds for Medicaid programs this year. Of that, about $6.2 million affected services for people with disabilities and mental health programs. The state-level cuts also meant the state lost significant matching federal funds, which pay about 70 percent of Medicaid costs.
Peter Hancock, a spokesman for the Kansas Health Policy Authority, said the cuts have had an effect, from access to physicians to durable medical equipment businesses that have stopped providing Kansas Medicaid recipients with wheelchairs. Numbers officially analyzing the impact aren't available.
"We hear anecdotally that there are some providers who won't take on new Medicaid patients or won't accept Medicaid at all now," Hancock said.
Parkinson asked for patience as the legislative session continues.
"I'm optimistic that we can properly fund the Medicaid providers," he said. "It's absolutely critical."
The Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services has seen its waiting list for people with developmental disabilities seeking home and community-based services expand to 2,236 as of Feb. 28. That is up from 1,397 in July 2008 and 1,655 in July 2009.
Murrow said cuts and the long waiting list tear away at what is otherwise a good system for helping people with disabilities become productive members of society. Seeing the recent Medicaid cuts restored would only begin to address problems.
"It doesn't solve the problem that there isn't enough money in the system to start with," Murrow said.
The petition to the Kansas high court cited the state's constitution, which calls for institutions for people with disabilities to be "fostered and supported by the state." Poor funding, Murrow said, has long strained the system, breaking that promise.
"I don't really know or care how it gets fixed," he said. "I just want it to get fixed. The funding situation needs to be fixed and the laws need to be complied with and the state constitution needs to be complied with."
Barbara Hollingsworth can be reached at (785) 233-7470 or barbara.hollingsworth@cjonline.com and tweets at twitter.com/CapJ_Barb.