The April 12 date set for awarding the new Medicaid contracts has come and gone without any announcement of who will get to provide health coverage and services for roughly a half-million Kansans.
There was some anticipation at the Kansas statehouse that the contracts would be awarded last Friday as previously indicated to lawmakers.
But there was no announcement, and many are still wondering about the state’s next step.
A spokesperson for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment said Wednesday in an email that the requests for proposals from seven bidders were still being reviewed. The Sunflower State Journal sought the status of the contracts on Monday.
“We cannot provide any information or confirmation of information regarding the bidder,” the agency said in an email. “We also cannot provide a date of when it will be complete or when the contracts will be awarded.”
In February, officials from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment laid out the timeline for awarding the KanCare contract in a presentation to the legislative committee that oversees the state’s Medicaid program, also known as KanCare.
The contracts for the existing KanCare managed care companies – Aetna Better Health, United Healthcare of Kansas and Sunflower State Health Plan – expire at the end of 2024.
The state wants to go live with the new contracts at the start of 2025.
Negotiations on the new contract were originally scheduled from March 22 through April 12 when the contract was supposed to be awarded.
State officials said they had set aside another month for a bid-protest period that was supposed to start on Monday and last through May 17.
KDHE had planned to start implementation and readiness reviews for the new providers on May 20.
It was not known how the failure to announce the awarding of a contract on April 12 would affect that timeline.
The three existing contractors – Aetna, United Healthcare and Sunflower – are among the seven bidders.
Four other companies have joined the bidding for one of the state’s most lucrative contracts, including Molina Healthcare of Kansas, UCare Kansas, Healthy Blue and CareSource.
The companies have been jockeying for months as the state rolled out its blueprint for Medicaid services – commonly known as Medicaid – earlier this fall.
Last June, CareSource, an Ohio-based managed care nonprofit, announced it was teaming up with Kansas groups that advocate for children, mental health and Kansans with intellectual disabilities to bid on the Medicaid contract.
CareSource, founded in 1989 and headquartered in Dayton, Ohio, formed an alliance with InterHab, the Children’s Alliance and the Association of Community Mental Health Centers to bid on the state’s managed care contracts to run the KanCare program.
The alliance is different in the sense it is intended to make up for any limited experience the managed care companies have in caring for Kansans with intellectual disabilities or mental health issues as well as children who are considered at risk, officials said.
UCare, an independent, nonprofit health plan based in Minnesota, also submitted a proposal.
The company reported serving more than 659,000 members in 2022, according to the company’s annual report.
It reported revenues of more than $6 billion during 2022, beating expenses by about $273.6 million, according to the report.
A coalition that includes Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City also is bidding on the KanCare contract.
The alliance, which operates under the name Healthy Blue, also includes Anthem Partnership Holding Company, a subsidiary of Anthem Inc. now renamed Elevance Health.
They serve 10.5 million Medicaid beneficiaries across 25 markets, including 1.6 million Medicaid members with specialized needs similar to those of the KanCare population.
A subsidiary of Elevance is AmeriGroup, which lost out in getting its KanCare contract renewed in 2018. AmeriGroup has now been rebranded as Wellpoint.
A spokesperson for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas has said the legacy AmeriGroup is not part of the coalition bidding on the contract.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas also hired the state’s former Medicaid director, Sarah Fertig, as its new director of government relations.
The company said Fertig is not involved in any of the work related to its managed care organization affiliate.
A fourth new bidder is Molina Healthcare of Long Beach, California.
Molina was founded in 1980 as a provider organization serving low-income families in Southern California and reincorporated in Delaware in 2002.
They company served about 5.3 million members across 19 states at the end of 2022.
The company reported $30.8 billion in premium revenue for 2022, up from $26.8 billion the year before, according to its annual report.
