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Advocates press for higher protected income limit for medically needy and retention of Medicaid expansion funding
Summary
Mental-health, disability-rights and expansion advocates urged the committee to raise the protected income level for the medically needy program, support private psychiatric-hospital funding and retain budget language and funding for Medicaid expansion in the governor’s proposal.
Several advocacy organizations and service providers urged the Committee on Social Services Budget to raise the protected income limit for the medically needy program and to retain funding that would enable legislative consideration of Medicaid expansion.
Speakers including Mary Jones (Kansas Mental Health Coalition), Mike Burgess (Disability Rights Center of Kansas), Sean Gatewood (KanCare Advocates Network), and April Holman (Alliance for Healthy Kansas) described how the current medically needy protected income level — which testimony said has been fixed at $475 per month since 1996 — prevents many people with serious mental illness or disability from accessing community-based services. Mike Burgess asked the committee to fund an increase to bring the protected income up to 100 percent of Supplemental Security Income (SSI), describing the single-month SSI figure for 2025 as $967; the group asked for approximately $940,000 SGF to implement the increase in eligibility.
Speakers argued that increasing protected income would reduce avoidable hospitalizations, improve housing stability and reduce the administrative churn that occurs when people cycle on and off programs every six months. Mary Jones also asked the committee to continue community hospital funding streams that support private psychiatric inpatient care and to increase medically needy protections to preserve continuity of psychiatric and case-management services.
Advocates also urged the committee to retain funding the governor included to permit legislative consideration of Medicaid expansion later in the session. April Holman and Sean Gatewood said expansion would bring federal dollars into Kansas, reduce uncompensated care, protect rural hospitals from closures, and extend coverage to many low-income working Kansans. Holman noted a federal “signing bonus” payment the state could receive after expansion and asked the committee to keep expansion funding in the budget so that a bill could be considered during the session.
No formal committee votes were recorded during the testimony. Committee members requested follow-up figures and slides referenced by KDHE and other agencies, which advocacy witnesses offered to provide.
