Kentucky Agrees to Settlement Reinstating, Re-Evaluating Services to Medicaid Beneficiaries Who Lost Coverage

Kentucky officials on Thursday agreed to a settlement that would re-evaluate the statuses of hundreds of people with mental disabilities who lost Medicaid coverage because of changes in eligibility requirements, the AP/Cincinnati Enquirer reports. Despite actions by Gov. Ernie Fletcher (R) to relax the requirements, which were implemented by former Gov. Paul Patton (D), the lawsuit filed by Kentucky Legal Services alleged that some people with mental illnesses remained unfairly excluded from Medicaid. Under the settlement, people who had applied for Medicaid and were denied will have their cases re-evaluated or they will be reinstated. The settlement also would implement less strict eligibility qualifications for long-term care recipients and would not affect the eligibility of current Medicaid beneficiaries. Further, the settlement calls for expediting the process to re-instate services for people who were denied nursing home or home and community services. Kentucky Legal Services lawyer Anne Marie Regan said, "We got pretty much everything we wanted in the lawsuit. These new standards that they agreed to use are actually more liberal than what were in place prior to April last year." Health Services Cabinet Secretary James Holsinger said, "This is a vulnerable population and we wanted to move quickly to fix the problem." He added, "There were still some remaining problems and we believe this settlement will correct them and provide coverage to the people who need it." The settlement calls for the cabinet to report the status of beneficiaries and their cases beginning August 1. A federal judge must first approve the settlement before it is considered final (Biesk, AP/Cincinnati Enquirer, 6/25).