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Minutes for SB45 - Committee on Public Health and Welfare
Short Title
Updating income eligibility requirements for the state children's health insurance program.
Minutes Content for Mon, Feb 13, 2023
Jenna Moyer, Staff Revisor gave an overview of SB45.
Sarah Fertig gave proponent testimony for SB45. She stated that KDHE supports SB45 because it would remove obsolete language from the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) statute and align CHIP eligibility with current federal poverty level (FPL) thresholds. CHIP provides comprehensive medical and behavioral health coverage for children under 19 years of age who have no other insurance coverage. As of December 2002, there were 51,410 Kansas children receiving CHIP benefits. SB45 would also strike an obsolete waiting period provision that became unenforceable following the passage of the Affordable Care Act. (Attachment 1)
Heather Braum spoke in support of SB45 by saying that it is a commonsense bill that makes technical fixes to the statute related to CHIP, including fixing an unintended error that has affected eligibility for nearly 15 years. The year-specific language "2008 federal poverty income guidelines" was unintentionally included in the final bill that became law. After the bill was enacted, the 2008 reference was never removed, impacting children's eligibility for the program. (Attachment 2)
They took questions from committee members.
Written only, proponent testimony was submitted by:
Brenda Sharpe, REACH Healthcare Foundation (Attachment 3)
Dr. Dena Hubbard, Kansas Chapter American Academy of Pediatrics (Attachment 4)
Nathan Madden, Health Forward Foundation (Attachment 5)
Sonja Bachus, Community Care Network of Kansas (Attachment 6)
Tonya Dorf Brunner, Oral Health Kansas (Attachment 7)
April Holman, Alliance for a Healthy Kansas (Attachment 8)
Chairperson Gossage closed the hearing on SB45.
