In October, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear announced the expansion of dental, vision and hearing benefits for 900,000 Kentucky adults on Medicaid. On March 16, the Republican-controlled General Assembly took a final vote to take those benefits away, calling the regulation used to install them deficient. Beshear said Thursday that he will find a way to keep them in place.
In presenting Senate Bill 65, Sen. Stephen West, R-Paris, said the regulation Beshear issued to expand these services was deficient because the funding came from the $38 million in savings that came when the state moved to a single pharmacy benefit manager, a middleman between drug manufacturers and companies that manage Medicaid.
West said using these savings amounted to the governor “appropriating money” and that lawmakers should have been involved in how it was spent.