Sky21– Despite bipartisan vows to prioritize disability services, current allocations would not be sufficient to keep wait times for state-funded Medicaid waivers from increasing. (Sam Bailey / Kansas Reflector)
TOPEKA — The governor and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle committed to shortening wait times for thousands of the state’s most vulnerable residents in need of medical attention.
However, current budget projections fall millions short of the amount required to reduce the number of Kansans waiting for critical state disability services.
Rocky Nichols, executive director of the Disability Rights Center of Kansas, cited earlier declarations from Republican legislative leadership and Gov. Laura Kelly proclaiming their intention to address a problem that had been building for 20 years.
“That’s an incredible promise to make to people with disabilities who are suffering on the waiting list,” he added. “Thus far, that version of the budget has not fulfilled that promise — nowhere close.”
Kansans with intellectual or developmental impairments are eligible for Medicaid-funded support waivers, which cover a wide range of essential services, including in-home care. Wait times can stretch more than ten years, and an increasing number of Kansans are joining the backlog. According to data from February, the wait list for intellectual and developmental impairments services is 5,279 persons long. The physical disability wait list has around 2,382 Kansans.
The Kansas Council on Developmental Disabilities, which has described wait times as “from bad to worse to completely out of control,” suggests cutting waitlists by 20% in fiscal year 2025. To accomplish this, Congress would need to fund 1,100 slots on the I/DD waiver and 500 slots on the PD waiver.
While the budget is far from being finalized, Senate lawmakers passed a state spending blueprint Thursday that includes $23 million to address extensive waiting lists for disability services, in line with Gov. Laura Kelly’s $23 million fiscal year 2025 budget recommendation for the lists. The investment would produce around 250 places on the I/DD and PD waiting lists.
If enrollment trends continue as they did last year, when 561 new persons joined the intellectual disability waitlist, the present recommendation will not be enough to keep the lists from rising, let alone reduce the number of people waiting for treatment.
“The waiting list is going to get worse, wait times are going to get longer under that,” Nichols went on to say. “I’m hopeful that the legislators will realize that and add more money in the budget, which they can do at any point during the process.”
Through a series of stories, the Kansas Reflector previously investigated how these extended wait times impacted thousands of disabled Kansans and their families. At the time, House Speaker Dan Hawkins and Senate President Ty Masterson declared that they were “laser-focused on eliminating Medicaid waiting lists to ensure the truly needy get the services they so desperately need.”
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