Federal immigration rules cost Kansas up to $1M

TOPEKA, (AP) — Federal rules aimed at catching illegal immigrants have cost Kansas up to $1 million and caused thousands of eligible Kansans to lose their health insurance.

Despite the cost, the rules led to the arrest of only one illegal immigrant, officials said Wednesday.

Senate Majority Leader Derek Schmidt, an Independence Republican, said the situation showed the failure of the federal government to enact good immigration policy.

“Instead of doing that, they’ve imposed a bunch of ancillary mandates on states, which are akin to trying to push a wet noodle up a hill with your nose,” Schmidt said. “State taxpayers are picking up the dollars and cents costs of a failed federal policy.”

The comments were made as legislators reviewed an audit of whether the state’s HealthWave call center was working properly. HealthWave is the state’s program to provide health insurance coverage to poor children. The program began in 1998 when it was estimated 60,000 children were uninsured.

The federal rules implemented July 1, 2006, require Medicaid recipients to provide proof of citizenship.

That produced a logjam of processing current recipients and new applicants. Many residents had to request copies of their birth certificates from other states, slowing the process.

Kansas Medicaid director Andy Allison said 20,000 eligible Kansans lost health insurance. And the state had to spend about $1 million to hire more personnel to handle telephone calls, applications and determine eligibility.

Allison said about half of those Kansans dropped from Medicaid eventually were re-enrolled.

Auditors found that the number of calls coming into the state center had decreased by the start of fiscal year 2008 last July 1 to levels experienced before the federal requirements took effect.

On the Net:

Kansas Legislature: www.kslegislature.org