TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The Kansas Insurance Department has redesigned its website in an effort to make it easier for users to navigate.

The department unveiled the new design Tuesday for www.ksinsurance.org . Insurance Commissioner Ken Selzer said the agency studied a variety of websites before overhauling its own.

The redesigned website’s home page has a news ticker that scrolls through the latest releases and information from the department. It has a screen for featured videos and a prominently displayed help menu.

The home page also links to the department’s Facebook page, its Twitter feed and a YouTube channel with educational videos.

Selzer is a Republican who was elected commissioner last year. He took office in January.

WINFIELD, Kan. (AP) — Cowley County deputies are searching for a 28-year-old inmate after they say he didn’t return to the jail from his court-ordered furlough.

Deputies say they were notified Monday that John Douglas Wooten didn’t return to Cowley County Jail.

Wooten was in custody for theft, forgery, making false information, bond violation and failure to appear.

Anyone with information about his whereabouts is asked to call authorities.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback and Attorney General Derek Schmidt are hosting a two-day conference later this week on crime victims’ rights.

The conference begins Thursday at the Hyatt Regency hotel and convention center in downtown Wichita. Brownback is scheduled to make opening remarks Thursday morning.

Schmidt plans to present awards during a Friday luncheon to recognize professionals and volunteers who provide services to crime victims.

It will be the 18th annual state conference on crime victims’ rights, and the attorney general’s office says this year’s focus is the need for community leaders and groups to provide services and support to victims. The conference includes more than 30 workshops.

KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two U.S. senators say it’s time to update the Food and Drug Administration’s regulation of the ingredients used in cosmetics and personal-care products such as shampoo and skin creams.

Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California and Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine are sponsoring legislation that would require the FDA to evaluate at least five ingredients per year to determine their safety.

Under the review process, the FDA would also provide companies with guidance about whether the ingredients should continue to be used.

The two senators say federal regulations covering the products haven’t been updated in 75 years.

Most bills introduced don’t make it into law. But the lawmakers have support from a wide array of consumer groups and companies, including Johnson & Johnson, Revlon and Proctor & Gamble.

By MIKE SHERRY
The public should expect to see significant evolutions in Medicare and Medicaid in coming years, a national health care expert told a Kansas City audience last Friday.

Genevieve M. Kenney of the Urban Institute said an inevitable component of Medicare’s need to save money will be talk about raising the eligibility age. The current age of eligibility is 65, but life expectancy has increased since enactment of the program 50 years ago.

“I think that is a reasonable question – what is the right age?” said Kenney, a senior fellow and co-director of the institute’s Health Policy Center.

Kenney addressed about 60 people, including officials of the four organizations sponsoring the event: the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City, the Henry W. Bloch School of Management at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, the Department of Health Policy and Management at the University of Kansas Medical Center and a student organization from KU Med.

Her talk focused on the history of the Medicare and Medicaid programs, which President Lyndon Johnson signed into law in 1965 at the presidential library of former President Harry Truman in Independence, Mo. Truman attended the ceremony.

Other items up for discussion, Kenney predicted, will be increased cost-sharing for well-off seniors along with a move toward quality-based reimbursements for providers and away from simply paying them for providing services.

Kenney also predicted similar reforms for Medicaid, including changing reimbursement criteria for providers and new cost-sharing requirements for enrollees.

She said some states are already achieving this through waiver agreements with the federal government as part of their expansion of Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act. Those waivers, she said, are also allowing states to reward patients for healthy behaviors.

Kenney also anticipates more talk of making the federal contribution to states a block grant rather than a percentage match of costs with the states.

She also said there will probably be ongoing discussions in state capitals about expanding Medicaid as envisioned by the ACA, which provides an enhanced federal match to states that increase Medicaid eligibility to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. Twenty-two states, including Missouri and Kansas, have chosen not to expand Medicaid.

Kenney envisioned the opposite debate too.

“In states that have adopted it,” she said, “I think there will be debate about whether to continue it.”

Kenney said both Medicare and Medicaid had succeeded in achieving their initial aims of extending health care coverage to the elderly and to poor children and families.

She noted that the percentage of seniors with hospital insurance jumped from 54 percent in the years just prior to Medicare’s enactment to 96 percent after enactment. In 1966 there were 19 million enrollees; in 2013, there were more than 50 million.

And as has been the case with the Affordable Care Act, all states were not eager to join Medicare at its inception.

Twenty-six states were participating as of January 1967, Kenney said, and Arizona was the last to join in October 1982.

Meanwhile, Medicaid eligibility has risen from well below 10 million beneficiaries in 1966 to nearly 60 million now.

The program, she said, has made great strides in reducing the ranks of uninsured poor children – falling from 30 percent in 1984 to less than 10 percent in 2012.

Mike Sherry is a reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.

GREAT BEND – A semi driver was injured in an accident just before 2 p.m. on Tuesday in Barton County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2008 Kenworth semi driven by Matthew P. Justus, Sr., 26, St. Edwards, NE., was westbound on U.S. 56 negotiating a right turn a half mile southwest of Great Bend.

The truck was traveling at speeds too great to turn. The truck rolled onto the right side.

Justus was transported to Great Bend Regional Medical Center.
The KHP reported he was not wearing a seat belt.

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senator Pat Roberts, R-Kan., Chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, today held a hearing on opportunities and challenges for agriculture trade with Cuba. Watch the video here.

The hearing, titled “Opportunities and Challenges for Agriculture Trade with Cuba,” had two panels.

“At the beginning of this Congress, I was hopeful that trade would be one area where we could work across the aisle to find agreement. I am still hopeful that is the case,” Chairman Roberts said.

“The United States and Cuba have a long history full of contention and instability. There is no shortage of opinion from members of Congress about the relationship between our two countries, both present and future.

“This is not an issue that we are going to be able to fix overnight. It will take efforts in addition to bills in Congress, to truly normalize trade with Cuba… Foreign policy does not happen in a vacuum. We have to take a realistic approach and work out a step by step plan towards lifting the embargo. This is a goal that should include Congress.”