CMS cancels announcement about rejecting lifetime limits in Medicaid
CMS was set to announce on May 1 it would deny a Medicaid waiver request from Kansas to impose a three-year lifetime limit on benefits in the program, but internal disagreements scuttled the announcement at the last minute, according to The Hill.
Kansas had proposed that beneficiaries of its KanCare Medicaid program could only receive benefits for three years. After that, those people would be dropped from the program and couldn’t re-enter for the rest of their lives. This was packaged with work requirements for Medicaid recipients, an idea which has been pushed by CMS Administrator Seema Verma, MPH, and harshly criticized by Democrats and liberal-leaning groups.
Verma still spoke to reporters as scheduled, offering some concerns about lifetime limits keeping people from being protected later in life if, for instance, they lost their employer-sponsored coverage.
“We're trying to think about all of the nuances here,” Verma told reporters. “We understand that people's circumstances change over time and that they may actually get into a job and then maybe something happens in a few years.”
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John joined TriMed in 2016, focusing on healthcare policy and regulation. After graduating from Columbia College Chicago, he worked at FM News Chicago and Rivet News Radio, and worked on the state government and politics beat for the Illinois Radio Network. Outside of work, you may find him adding to his never-ending graphic novel collection.