Kansas has received bids from five private managed care organizations seeking a share of the Kansas Medicaid program.
Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer, who is overseeing the switch to a privatized Medicaid system called KanCare, says he’s encouraged by what he calls “such broad interest and quality bidders.”
Analyst Scott Brunner, of the non-profit Kansas Health Institute, is a former Kansas Medicaid Director. He says there were never this many companies submitting bids for the Healthwave portion of Medicaid.
“I think getting five gives the state some choices, and that’s clearly what was desired in the RFP,” says Brunner. “I can recall times in my experience when we didn’t meet the timelines that we had set out, so the state’s at least has done that. They’ve kept the bidding process moving, and that’s a positive thing.”
The state will now evaluate the bids, and then move on to contract negotiations, with three of the bidders getting contracts late this spring, if the timeline holds up.
Each of those contracts will be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 billion.
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