The Kansas Medicaid system that helps thousands of people with developmental disabilities will be effectively privatised from January 1st 2013 (assuming the world doesn’t end on 21st December 2012), and even worse, Medicaid, under it’s new guise of KanCare will likely be outsourced to out of state commercially operated insurance companies, I fail to see how privatising public services can be a good thing. I have seen this happen in the UK with transport links and it has suffered badly with poor services, I really don’t want to see that happen to the services my seven year old son relies on, we can not afford to pay the $95 per session fees.
Gov. Sam Brownback and his administration have fast-tracked this legislation using their executive authority without any legislative approval or consultation with local providers. Brownback’s administration can’t even given a consistent straight answer to providers, every phone call from providers to this administrations office yields different answers, according to what I have read in the Wichita Eagle.
In my opinion, this administration is very short-sighted; because it hasn’t consulted with providers, they don’t seem to realise, (or care) that early intervention is the best way of getting these kids out of the system as they grow into adults. I don’t buy the bulls**t that the “person-centered” integrated care program will improve outcomes, when these private sector companies are judged on their effectiveness (read as “how cheaply they can provide services”); corners WILL be cut whenever possible; which will almost certainly mean a cut in the quality of services! Providers will have to bid to provide services based on who can provide the cheapest services!
I’m not sure whether we can do anything about it but there are some within the Kansas senate that want the developmentally disabled excluded from the KanCare bill. Rep. Jim Ward, Democrat and Sen. Dick Kelsey, Republican want DD to be “carved out” from the bill, with Sen. Kelsey going further saying that the reform was being rushed through and proposed that the bill should be delayed until 1st July 2013; to which the Brownback administration has said “Why would we?”. I believe there is some other agenda going on here, I’m always suspicious when public services are privatised. We are looking at moving to another state before this bill comes into force, this whole debacle (mark my words, it will fail average Kansans miserably) is very American, putting money ahead of people, stop fighting foreign wars and put those billions of dollars into local government serv1ices!
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