Editorial: Balancing Bottom Line and Risk

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback’s administration is embarking on a fundamental restructuring of the state’s Medicaid program, which will place all recipients under privately run managed care programs.
The plan is an ambitious attempt to rein in costs and improve health outcomes without booting Kansans off eligibility rosters or reducing reimbursements to health care providers. Brownback and Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer, the plan’s chief architect, deserve praise for seeking to avoid those draconian measures.
But the plan also places the state’s most fragile populations — the physically and developmentally disabled, mentally ill and impoverished elderly — into managed care plans run by companies with an eye on their bottom line.