Hearing Set for Thursday (Feb. 9) on Family Care Bill

The Senate Committee on Health announced today that it will hold a public hearing this Thursday, Feb. 9, on SB 380, which removes the cap on enrollment in Family Care and other long-term care programs. The hearing is scheduled to start at 11:00 a.m. in Room 201-SE in the Capitol.   Note that there are also two other bills on the agenda, which I suspect the committee will take up first (to get those done before considering the bill that is likely to draw a lot more testimony).   

The most recent estimate of the cost of lifting the long-term care cap is about $71 million GPR for the current biennium.   However, SB 380 does not contain an appropriation because the intent of the bill’s authors and the Walker Administration is to find offsetting savings within long-term care programs.   A January 26th Legislative Fiscal Bureau memo discusses the status of the Medicaid budget and various cost-saving measures that have been recommended by the Dept. of Health Services (DHS), including the proposed savings in Family Care (starting on p.4). 

As I noted in a January 29 blog post, DHS is now accepting online comments about the planned cost-savings within long-term care. 

The two other bills the Senate health Committee will hear on Thursday are:

• SB-421 – Physicians Assistants (Vukmir) – Authorizing medically related actions by physicians assistants.
• SB-383 – Anesthesiologist (Darling) – Licensing anesthesiologist assistants and creates the Council on Anesthesiologist Assistants. 

Jon Peacock