TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Advocates for seniors in Kansas say that several changes made to streamline the Medicaid application and renewal process have actually made it difficult for the state’s elderly population.

Kansas moved to a new computer system in 2015 for applying for Kansas Medicaid, otherwise known as KanCare. The state then funneled applications and annual reviews previously handed in regional offices into a single “KanCare Clearinghouse” in Topeka.

Since then, the number of seniors covered by KanCare for in-home nursing help has decreased, as well as the number being covered for nursing home beds.

“Some seniors are really having a tough time getting onto Medicaid,” said Dan Goodman, director of the Johnson County Area Agency on Aging. “They get frustrated, are in poor or declining health, become defeated by the process and give up.”

State spokeswoman Angela de Rocha said there are other factors behind the decrease in seniors on Medicaid, including an increase in those being served by another government program that gives alternatives to nursing homes.

But de Rocha said the state agreed that “the shortcomings of the Clearinghouse account for a significant portion” of the decrease.

“These populations have a more difficult time navigating the eligibility process,” she said.

Nursing home administrators have repeatedly complained that the computer system roll-out is hurting them financially and that delays have caused some homes to limit the number of people with pending Medicaid applications they’ll take.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment have said it’s working to fix the problem. This year, the department is assigning a specific case worker to each nursing facility to allow nursing home billing departments to have a single point of contact who knows their cases. De Rocha said the agency is considering moving to that system for individual Kansas seniors as well.

By JIM MCLEAN

A crowded race for the Republican nomination for governor in Kansas has candidates looking for ways to stand out.

At a forum held this month in Wichita, the hopefuls signaled how they hope to separate themselves from the field.

Secretary of State Kris Kobach wants primary voters to see him as the true conservative in the contest.

“If you want to see full throttled conservatism in Kansas then I’m your man,” Kobach told a near-capacity crowd at the state GOP convention. “We will go full speed ahead.”

He used a question about property taxes to employ the sort of provocative language that has marked his career, and the campaign in front of him now. Kobach said “stealth” increases in the assessments on his Douglas County farm had made him and his wife “slave farmers.”

“We are growing our crops for Kansas and not ourselves,” he said, claiming it takes nearly all of their relatively small farm income to pay the taxes.

Gov. Jeff Colyer is Kobach’s main rival for the nomination, according to the most recent public poll on the race. He had the flu and sat out the Saturday debate.

The other, lesser-known, candidates pitched themselves as successful business leaders who could bring order to a state government in turmoil.

Willis “Wink” Hartman, a Wichita oil and restaurant businessman who has loaned his campaign $1.6 million and said he was ready to lead a turnaround in Topeka quit the race last week.

But Mark Hutton, the founder of a Wichita-based construction company and a former legislator said he brings something to the table that Hartman doesn’t: Statehouse experience.

“I’m the only candidate up here that has 25 years of CEO experience from the ground up building a company … coupled with four years of legislative experience and, more importantly, the relationships that are going to be necessary to move Kansas forward,” Hutton said.

During his four years in the Kansas House, Hutton compiled a conservative voting record but also earned a reputation for independence as one of the first Republicans to call for a rollback of then Gov. Sam Brownback’s tax cuts.

Kansas Insurance Commissioner Ken Selzer billed himself as a “thoughtful, calm decision-maker,” perhaps in contrast to Kobach’s more combative leadership style.  Repeatedly sounding practiced themes, Selzer promised to “lean in” to the job of reining in spending and growing the Kansas economy.

“We are going to make Kansas grow again,” Selzer said. “Remember that.”

Former state Sen. Jim Barnett watched from the sidelines, barred him from the stage by party officials for refusing to sign rules of participation that he said amounted to censorship.

“‘I’m not going to sign what I think is a debate agreement that is against democracy and the principles of this country,” Barnett said. “I would have spoken the truth and we didn’t hear that tonight. … What we heard tonight was a return to the Brownback/Colyer policies that took our state down to its knees.”

Rather than calling for reduced spending, smaller government and putting the Kansas Supreme Court in its place on the school funding issue, Barnett said he would have advocated for increased education funding and for expanding Medicaid eligibility to an additional 150,000 low-income Kansans.

Barnett was the party’s gubernatorial nominee in 2006 but lost to former Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

The candidates who participated – Kobach and Hutton in particular – took a hard line on the school funding issue. They insisted it’s the legislature’s job should decide what’s appropriate, not the court.

“We have to clear up this constitutional amendment issue and tell the Supreme Court — the Sebelius Supreme Court — to butt out,” Hutton said.

Kobach cautioned GOP voters against buying the “fake argument” made by supporters of Medicaid expansion that it would help struggling rural hospitals.

“Unfortunately, there are some Republicans who haven’t got the message yet,” he said.

A recent poll by Remington Research Group, a GOP consulting company, showed Kobach and Colyer running neck-and-neck in the early going. Colyer held a 23 percent to 21 percent lead. Barnett was a distant third at 8 percent, followed by Hutton and Hartman at 5 percent each and Selzer at 3 percent.

The tilt-to-the-right tone of the debate scored well with the Republicans who came from around the state for the convention. For instance, retired Wichita teacher Elaine Fisher agreed with attacks on the Kansas Supreme Court over school funding.

“We need to get away from judges controlling how much money the state has to pay for education,” she said.

But the assault on the state’s high court didn’t resonate with everyone. Bill Clifford, a Garden City ophthalmologist and chair of the Finney County Republican Party, says what works in the convention hall may not work with the cross-section of voters needed to win.

“We have a much broader voting population out there,” the western Kansas Republican said. “All the candidates need to touch that group that wasn’t present in the building tonight.”

Jim McLean is managing director of the Kansas News Service. You can reach him on Twitter @jmcleanks

By JIM MCLEAN

Kansas lawmakers head into the next stretch of this year’s legislative session after advancing bills offering tax breaks to some smaller businesses, compensation to people thrown in prison unjustly and a welcome mat to industrial chicken growers.

The bigger, harder questions before them remain unanswered. After gaveling out on Thursday, they take off a few days.

When legislators return, they’ll still need to find a way to comply with a court order to up the state’s education game. That could cost the state another $600 million a year in aid to local school districts.

They’ll need to do that while struggling to balance overall state government spending, a task that’s proven particularly difficult in recent years.

And the lawmakers will revisit whether to expand Medicaid coverage to more of the working poor, an Obamacare flashpoint that’s divided the Republican-dominated legislature from its GOP governors.

“It’s always amazing how fast session moves,” Rep. Don Schroeder, a Republican from Hesston, wrote in his most recent newsletter to constituents. Now, he wrote, “the pace picks up. … Despite the fast pace, education and the budget still remain the major issues for us to address.”

This week, the committees that study and refine bills shut down so that legislators could spend time on the floors of the House and Senate moving bills hatched one chamber across the Capitol rotunda to the other.

A tax-cut bill that passed the Senate easily may get more intense scrutiny in the House, given the need to free up potentially hundreds of millions of additional dollars to satisfy a Kansas Supreme Court order to increase public school funding.

The bill restores a small business tax deduction that lawmakers repealed last year when they rolled back then-Gov. Sam Brownback’s income tax cuts. Several senators said they voted for the measure with reservations because of its estimated $21 million cost to next year’s budget.

“We are going to be removing money from our budget today … that we might need, either for schools or, for example, Medicaid expansion,” said Republican Sen. Barbara Bollier, of Mission Hills.

That concern prompted eight of the Senate’s 40 members to vote against the bill, including Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, of Topeka.

“While there are those who complain how more money for schools will damage other parts of the budget, the first bill of significant cost to the budget is a tax cut,” Hensley said.

That could be a costly misstep in the eyes of the court, Hensely said, if lawmakers struggle to come up with the money needed for schools.

The Senate also passed bill aimed at enticing more large poultry producers to the state after a lengthy debate about potential consequences to communities and the environment.

Sen. Tom Holland, a Baldwin City Democrat, was one of several northeast Kansas lawmakers drawn into a controversy after public opposition to plans by chicken processing giant Tyson to build a plant near Tonganoxie. Tyson ultimately scrapped its plans for that plant.

“People get really frustrated when they get jerked around by state government and large industrial ag concerns who come in literally overnight and say ‘this is a done deal,’” Holland said.

Holland attempted to add language to the bill to allow residents in a county where such a facility is proposed to petition for a public vote. But his amendment was defeated by senators who argued against doing anything that might discourage poultry processors from expanding in Kansas.

“Part of the state, I grant you, does not want this type of operation and that’s understandable,” said Sen. Bud Estes, a Dodge City Republican. “But there’s other parts of the state that this would fit in quite nicely.”

Estes and others said the millions of pounds of “dry manure” — achieved with industrial methods that lessen the stench — produced by mega chicken-breeding facilities would be used as fertilizer.

Legislation authorizing a system for compensating people who spend time in Kansas prisons for crimes they didn’t commit proved less controversial. On Thursday, both the House and Senate passed compensation bills by wide margins.

In urging passage of the Senate bill, Republican Sen. Molly Baumgardner called it an opportunity “to right a wrong for Kansas.”

Currently, Kansas is one of 18 states that offers no compensation for individuals who have been wrongfully imprisoned.

The bill passed by the Senate would provide exonerated individuals $50,000 for each year spent in prison and an additional $25,000 for each year on probation or parole.

The House-passed bill is more generous. It authorizes $80,000 for each year of wrongful imprisonment.

A conference committee of House and Senate members will start working to reconcile the bills next week when lawmakers return.

And lawmakers have advanced legislation that would make “swatting” illegal. That push came after the death of a man in Wichita last year. What started with a rivalry between online gamers ended with police crashing into what they’d been tricked into thinking was a hostage situation and shooting Andrew Finch.

Swatting, as in summoning a police SWAT team with a phony 9-1-1 call, is a prank associated largely with gamers. Partly because they battle long distance, swatting is a way to pursue revenge in the real world.

The legislation would set stiff penalties for reporting a bogus situation with the intent of sending police out to attack a person’s home.

Jim McLean is managing director of the Kansas News Service. You can reach him on Twitter @jmcleanks. 

MONTREAT, N.C. (AP) — The Rev. Billy Graham, who transformed American religious life through his preaching and activism, becoming a counselor to presidents and the most widely heard Christian evangelist in history, died Wednesday. He was 99.

Graham, who long suffered from cancer, pneumonia and other ailments, died at his home in North Carolina, spokesman Mark DeMoss told The Associated Press.

More than anyone else, Graham built evangelicalism into a force that rivaled liberal Protestantism and Roman Catholicism in the United States. His leadership summits and crusades in more than 185 countries and territories forged powerful global links among conservative Christians, and threw a lifeline to believers in the communist-controlled Eastern bloc. Dubbed “America’s pastor,” he was a confidant to U.S. presidents from Gen. Dwight Eisenhower to George W. Bush.

In 1983, President Reagan gave Graham the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor. When the Billy Graham Museum and Library was dedicated in 2007 in Charlotte, former Presidents George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton attended.

“When he prays with you in the Oval Office or upstairs in the White House, you feel he’s praying for you, not the president,” Clinton said at the ceremony.

Beyond Graham’s public appearances, he reached untold millions through his pioneering use of prime-time telecasts, network radio, daily newspaper columns, evangelistic feature films and globe-girdling satellite TV hookups. Graham’s message was not complex or unique, yet he preached with a conviction that won over audiences worldwide.

“The Bible says,” was his catch phrase. His unquestioning belief in Scripture turned the Gospel into a “rapier” in his hands, he said.

A tall, striking man with thick hair, stark blue eyes and a firm jaw, Graham was a commanding presence at his crusades. He would make the altar call in his powerful baritone, asking the multitudes to stand, come down the aisles and publicly make “decisions for Christ,” as a choir crooned the hymn “Just As I Am.”

By his final crusade in 2005 in New York City, he had preached in person to more than 210 million people worldwide. No evangelist is expected to have his level of influence again.

“William Franklin Graham Jr. can safely be regarded as the best who ever lived at what he did,” said William Martin, author of the Graham biography “A Prophet With Honor.”

Born Nov. 7, 1918, on his family’s dairy farm near Charlotte, North Carolina, Graham came from a fundamentalist background that expected true Bible-believers to stay clear of Christians with even the most minor differences over Scripture. But as his crusades drew support from a widening array of Christian churches, he came to reject that view.

He joined in a then-emerging movement called New Evangelicalism, that abandoned the narrowness of fundamentalism to engage broader society. Fundamentalists at the time excoriated the preacher for his new direction, and broke with him when he agreed to work with more liberal Christians in the 1950s.

Graham stood fast. He would not reject people who were sincere and shared at least some of his beliefs, Martin said. He wanted the widest hearing possible for his salvation message.

“The ecumenical movement has broadened my viewpoint and I recognize now that God has his people in all churches,” he said in the early 1950s.

In 1957, he said, “I intend to go anywhere, sponsored by anybody, to preach the Gospel of Christ.”

His approach helped evangelicals gain the influence they have today. Graham’s path to becoming an evangelist began taking shape at age 16, when the Presbyterian-reared farmboy committed himself to Christ at a local tent revival.

“I did not feel any special emotion,” he wrote in his 1997 autobiography, “Just As I Am.” ”I simply felt at peace,” and thereafter, “the world looked different.”

After high school, he enrolled at the fundamentalist Bob Jones College, but found the school stifling, and transferred to Florida Bible Institute in Tampa. There, he practiced sermonizing in a swamp, preaching to birds and alligators before tryouts with small churches. He still wasn’t convinced he should be a preacher until a soul-searching, late-night ramble on a golf course.

“I finally gave in while pacing at midnight on the 18th hole,” he said. “‘All right, Lord,’ I said, ‘If you want me, you’ve got me.'”

Graham, who became a Southern Baptist, went on to study at Wheaton College, a prominent Christian liberal arts school in Illinois, where he met fellow student Ruth Bell, who had been raised in China where her father had been a Presbyterian medical missionary.

The two married in 1943, and he planned to become an Army chaplain. But he fell seriously ill, and by the time he recovered and could start the chaplain training program, World War II was nearly over.

Instead, he took a job organizing meetings in the U.S. and Europe with Youth for Christ, a group he helped found. He stood out then for his loud ties and suits, and a rapid delivery and swinging arms that won him the nickname “the Preaching Windmill.”

A 1949 Los Angeles revival turned Graham into evangelism’s rising star. Held in a tent dubbed the “Canvas Cathedral,” Graham had been drawing adequate, but not spectacular crowds until one night when reporters and photographers descended. When Graham asked them why, a reporter said that legendary publisher William Randolph Hearst had ordered his papers to hype Graham. Graham said he never found out why.

The publicity gave him a national profile. Over the next decade, his massive crusades in England and New York catapulted him to international celebrity. His 12-week London campaign in 1954 defied expectations, drawing more than 2 million people and the respect of the British, many of whom had derided him before his arrival as little more than a slick salesman. Three years later, he held a crusade in New York’s Madison Square Garden that was so popular it was extended from six to 16 weeks, capped off with a rally in Times Square that packed Broadway with more than 100,000 people.

The strain of so much preaching caused the already trim Graham to lose 30 pounds by the time the event ended. It remains his longest revival meeting ever.

As his public influence grew, the preacher’s stands on the social issues of his day were watched closely by supporters and critics alike. One of the most pressing was the civil rights movement. Graham was no social activist and never joined marches, which led prominent Christians such as theologian Reinhold Niebuhr to publicly condemn Graham as too moderate. Still, Graham ended racially segregated seating at his Southern crusades in 1953, a year before the Supreme Court’s school integration ruling, and long refused to visit South Africa while its white regime insisted on racially segregated meetings.

In a 2005 interview with The Associated Press, before his final crusade which was held in New York, Graham said he regretted that he didn’t battle for civil rights more forcefully.

“I think I made a mistake when I didn’t go to Selma” with many clergy who joined the historic Alabama march led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “I would like to have done more.” Graham more robustly took on the cause of anti-Communism, making preaching against the atheist regime part of his sermons for years.

As America’s most famous religious leader, he golfed with statesmen and entertainers and dined with royalty. Graham’s relationships with U.S. presidents also boosted his ministry and became a source of pride for conservative Christians who were so often caricatured as backward. But those ties proved problematic when his close friend Richard Nixon resigned in the Watergate scandal, leaving Graham devastated and baffled. He resolved to take a lower profile in the political world, going as far as discouraging the Rev. Jerry Falwell, a founder of the Moral Majority, from mixing religion and politics.

“Evangelicals can’t be closely identified with any particular party or person. We have to stand in the middle, to preach to all the people, right and left,” Graham said in 1981, according to Time magazine. “I haven’t been faithful to my own advice in the past. I will in the future.”

Yet, in the 2012 election, with Graham mostly confined to his North Carolina home, he all but endorsed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. And the evangelist’s ministry took out full-page ads in newspapers support a ballot referendum that would ban same-sex marriage.

His son, the Rev. Franklin Graham, who runs the ministry, said his father viewed the gay marriage question as a moral, not a political, issue. Graham’s integrity was credited with salvaging the reputation of broadcast evangelism in the dark days of the late 1980s, after scandals befell TV preachers Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker.

He resolved early on never to be alone with a woman other than his wife. Instead of taking a share of the “love offerings” at his crusades, as was the custom, he earned a modest salary from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

His ministry was governed by an independent board that included successful Christian businessmen and other professionals — a stark departure from the widespread evangelical practice of packing boards with relatives and yes-men.

“Why, I could make a quarter of a million dollars a year in this field or in Hollywood if I wanted to,” Graham said. “The offers I’ve had from Hollywood studios are amazing. But I just laughed. I told them I was staying with God.”

While he succeeded in preserving his reputation, he could not completely shield his family from the impact of his work. He was on the road for months at a time, leaving Ruth at their mountainside home in Montreat, North Carolina, to raise their five children: Franklin, Virginia (“Gigi”), Anne, Ruth and Nelson (“Ned”).

Anne Graham Lotz has said that her mother was effectively “a single parent.” Ruth sometimes grew so lonely when Billy was traveling that she slept with his tweed jacket for comfort. But she said, “I’d rather have a little of Bill than a lot of any other man.” She died in June 2007 at age 87.

“I will miss her terribly,” Billy Graham said, “and look forward even more to the day I can join her in heaven.”

In his later years, Graham visited communist Eastern Europe and increasingly appealed for world peace. He opened a 1983 convention of evangelists from 140 nations by urging the elimination of nuclear and biological weapons.

He told audiences in Czechoslovakia that “we must do all we can to preserve life and avoid war,” although he opposed unilateral disarmament. In 1982, he went to Moscow to preach and attend a conference on world peace. During that visit, he said he saw no signs of Soviet religious persecution, a misguided attempt at diplomacy that brought scathing criticism from author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, among others.

“It’s worth taking a risk for peace,” Graham contended, although he was clearly stung by the controversy.

Graham’s relationship with Nixon became an issue once again when tapes newly released in 2002 caught the preacher telling the president that Jews “don’t know how I really feel about what they’re doing to this country.”

Graham apologized, saying he didn’t recall ever having such feelings and asking the Jewish community to consider his actions above his words on that tape. Health problems gradually slowed Graham, but he did not cease preaching.

In 1995, his son, Franklin, was named the ministry’s leader. Along with the many honors he received from the evangelical community and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Graham received the $1 million Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in 1982 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1996.

Graham will be buried by his wife, Ruth, at the Billy Graham Museum and Library.

“I have been asked, ‘What is the secret?'” Graham had said of his preaching. “Is it showmanship, organization or what? The secret of my work is God. I would be nothing without him.”

___

The Rev. Billy Graham, who transformed American religious life through his preaching and activism, becoming a counselor to presidents and the most widely heard Christian evangelist in history, has died.

Spokesman Mark DeMoss says Graham, who long suffered from cancer, pneumonia and other ailments, died at his home in North Carolina on Wednesday morning. He was 99.

Graham reached more than 200 million through his appearances and millions more through his pioneering use of television and radio. Unlike many traditional evangelists, he abandoned narrow fundamentalism to engage broader society.