Senate Appropriations Committee adopts substitute and gives House Bill 695 favorable report

At a meeting of the Kentucky Senate Appropriations and Revenue Committee, members adopted a committee substitute for House Bill 695 and then voted to report the bill favorably by roll call, registering 11 ayes and no nays.

Senator McDaniel, chair of the committee, opened the meeting noting the panel had a quorum. Senator Mayes Bledsoe presented the committee substitute, saying the document before members summarized the changes and deletions under consideration. "First, we added in here the Medicaid Oversight Advisory Board," Mayes Bledsoe said, and then described a series of edits in numbered sections of the substitute.

The committee substitute makes several programmatic and administrative changes to Kentucky's Medicaid statute and program operations as summarized by Mayes Bledsoe on the record. Among the principal changes the presenter listed:

- Adds the Medicaid Oversight Advisory Board (MOAB) into the bill.

- Exempts changes to the Medicaid program that are necessitated by requirements imposed by the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services from the statutory requirement that the General Assembly authorize Medicaid program changes (section 1.5).