By ANDY MARSO

Senators from both parties predicted a renewed effort to remove disability support services from KanCare during a candidate forum this week in Topeka.

The forum hosted by the Topeka Independent Living Resource Center focused on disability issues and featured candidates for state and federal office.

Mike Oxford, the center’s executive director, asked the candidates if they thought home and community-based services, or HCBS, should continue to be administered by three private insurance companies as part of the state’s managed care Medicaid program.

Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, a Democrat from Topeka, told the crowd of about 50 that he was part of an effort to keep those services out of KanCare when it was launched in 2013.

“Unfortunately we were not successful in doing that,” Hensley said. “I, for one, would be more than willing to revisit that issue and try to carve that out.”

Gov. Sam Brownback’s administration agreed to leave home and community-based services for Kansans with developmental disabilities out of KanCare for the first year, in favor of a voluntary pilot program. That decision came after disability advocates and service providers argued that the daily support services were fundamentally different from the acute medical care that insurance companies had more experience covering.

Efforts to keep services for people with developmental disabilities out of KanCare past the first year were unsuccessful.

Sen. Vicki Schmidt of Topeka, the lone Republican legislative candidate who attended this week’s forum, said “there was a lot of fear, a lot of unknowns, a lot of questions that we had” about privatizing the services at the time.

The past two years have not dispelled those concerns, she said, citing persistent billing problems and delayed payments from the KanCare companies as examples.

Schmidt said she hoped the next Legislature would discuss separating home and community-based services again.

“Now we have history on our side, and history tells us about how big some of the KanCare issues are,” Schmidt said.
Schmidt’s Democratic opponent, Candace Ayars, is a public health specialist who formerly worked for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.

Ayars said she opposed privatization of Medicaid services because health care is a unique industry with priorities that conflict with profit motives.

“There are probably two places where business has no business,” Ayars said. “One of those is health care and the other is education, and we’ve seen firsthand what trying to put those on a for-profit model does.”

More conservative legislators who have supported KanCare did not attend the candidate forum.

The Brownback administration has said KanCare will save the state $1 billion over its first five years while also improving health outcomes by coordinating care.

Angela de Rocha, a spokeswoman for state agencies, said she had requested information on how much it would cost the state to remove HCBS services from KanCare. Regardless of the financials, she said the state “does not believe it would benefit individuals receiving waiver services.”

HCBS providers have complained about increased billing complexities since the switch to KanCare and recent policy changes they say will cut their reimbursements.

Some people receiving the services have waged public battles against reductions in services. But the three KanCare insurers have produced clients who have praised their administration and expressed gratitude for the work of specific case managers.

Those stories are frequently aired at meetings of the Robert G. (Bob) Bethell Joint Committee on Home and Community Based Services and KanCare Oversight.

Renae Hansen is a former staffer on that committee who is now the Democratic candidate for Kansas House District 54.

During the forum Hansen said based on what she had heard at the committee meetings, she also favors changes to KanCare.

“There’s all kinds of issues and it really needs to be looked at,” Hansen said.

Andy Marso is a reporter for KHI News Service in Topeka, a partner in the Heartland Health Monitor team. You can reach him on Twitter @andymarso

JUNCTION CITY, Kan. (AP) — Authorities say a man from Mexico who has been deported several times faces charges accusing him of raping a child in Kansas.

Tomas Martinez-Maldonado is jailed in Geary County on $100,000 bond on a charge of raping a child under the age of 14 last month while on a Greyhound bus trip on I-70.

Public defender Cole Hawver declined to comment Friday. The public defender’s office was appointed to represent Martinez-Maldonado during his first appearance Thursday.

The Kansas Bureau of Information says he was taken into custody in late September in Missouri, where authorities alerted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

ICE said Friday that Martinez-Maldonado has been deported back to Mexico 10 times since 2010. ICE also says he’s a priority for deportation when his Kansas case is completed.

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GEARY COUNTY – Law enforcement authorities in Geary County are investigating a suspect for an alleged rape.

Tomas Martinez-Maldonado, 41, Marietta, Georgia, was arrested on a Geary County District Court warrant charging him with the rape of a 12-year-old girl, according to Geary County Sheriff Tony Wolf.

The Kansas City, Kansas Police Department contacted Geary County authorities. “A Greyhound bus had made a stop in Kansas City and there was an alleged rape that occurred on the bus, however they had no idea where this rape took place,” according to Wolf.

The KBI was called to investigate and determined the crime occurred somewhere on Interstate 70 in Geary County in late September.

Martinez-Maldonado was arrested in Kansas City and then returned to the Geary County Detention Center.

Martinez-Maldonado is allegedly an eight-time deported illegal alien, according to the sheriff.

LABETTE COUNTY – Law enforcement authorities in southeast Kansas are investigating two suspects on drug and and weapons charges.

On Friday morning the Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI), the Parsons Police Department and the Labette County Sheriff’s Office conducted a search warrant to conclude a two month long investigation into the sale of methamphetamine, according to a media release.

The search warrant was executed at a residence at 1411 Belmont in Parsons. As a result of the investigation, 35-year old Josh Brown was arrested and booked into the Labette County Jail on charges of Distribution of Methamphetamine, Possession with the Intent to Distribute within 1,000 feet of School Property, Criminal Possession of a Firearm, Possession of Prescription Pills with the Intent to Distribute and Possession of Drug Paraphernalia.

Also arrested was Audra Nixon or Misdemeanor Possession of Drug Paraphernalia.

Seized during the search warrant was approximately one half ounce of methamphetamine, one vehicle, one pistol, two rifles, $600 in cash, and scales as well as other drug-related paraphernalia. The confiscated vehicle was previously reported stolen in Nebraska and the pistol had been reported stolen in Labette County.

The KBI’s mission in proactive narcotics operations like these is to partner with all relevant law enforcement agencies in an effort to reduce the availability and distribution of drugs in Kansas.