The 2026 Kentucky General Assembly doesn't convene for another eight months, but legislative leaders are already thinking ahead.

Earlier this week, Senate President Robert Stivers and House Speaker David Osborne spoke to Commerce Lex, where they discussed goals for the interim period, the new Medicaid Oversight and Advisory Board, and how they see federal trends affecting next year's budget making process in Frankfort.

Our Mackenzie Spink has a look at their remarks.

The proposed changes from the federal government may have Kentuckians wondering how it will affect them at the state level, especially concerning the proposed cuts to Medicaid, according to KFF, formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Medicaid in Kentucky covers 1 in 4 adults and 4 in 9 children.

Senate President Robert Stivers says budget discussions have taken the federal proposals into consideration, but that it's hard to be proactive in these situations.

We don't know what's going to happen.

We can't control that.

We are having communications.

But depending and I will give you this number.

I think it's right.

We're generally at a 7030 Medicaid match, 30% state dollars, 70% federal dollars.

Two or 3 or 5 point differential, like a 6535 made $1 billion difference in our budget.

So it does affect us.

So I think there was some discussion early that we may do a few more things in the budget.

Our dependance, and relationship to the federal government and dollars in certain areas make it very difficult for us to to do things in this session that may be impacted either in a positive or negative way.

We don't know until we see what comes out of out of Washington.

We've done a really good job since we've been in the majority of being proactive, not waiting for bad things to happen, to react.

In this particular case with the federal, forced downs that we may see, in federal programs, unfortunately, we don't have the we don't have the opportunity to be proactive.

And so, we are subject to, to be more reactive.

And that's an uncomfortable place.

But at the same time, we've we know that we built a strong enough foundation.

We know that we built a significant, and sufficient budget reserve to handle those, those unforeseen things that are thrown at us.

Regardless of federal changes, Kentucky's Medicaid system is still under the magnifying glass.

This year, the General Assembly voted to create the Medicaid Oversight and Advisory Board as a way to try and rein in the system's growing costs.

At this luncheon, the leader stated that the board will be up and running this month.

You know, Medicaid is our second largest, second largest budget item.

But it's so much larger than a budget item.

It is, as Robert said, it's the delivery of health care to nearly a third of our population.

But the fact of the matter is that, you know, we've taken we've cycled 200,000 people off our Medicaid rolls in the past year, and yet our Medicaid expenses have gone up 6%.

Not only is it the second largest, budgetary item, I would submit to you that it's the largest area of account, a lack of accountability and delivery of those dollars.

In delivers incredibly important services to a vast majority of people and best number of people in our commonwealth.

And so we've got to make sure that those, those services, those dollars are doing the very best they can possibly do.

We don't want to create cliffs for people, that all of a sudden that next dollar takes them off the Medicaid rolls.

But that gets into we don't want to create a system that is disincentives to go to work, either because we have such a shortage of workforce.

And that's beyond the delivery of health care, how it impacts other things.

And, within our economy, because health care is such a huge portion, I think it's between 15 and 18% of our total economy, but it impacts so much more of our economy.

In Kentucky, Legislative sessions that take place in even numbered years are dedicated to the state budget.

Speaker Osborne says the work already being done on the budget is a little bit different than usual.

It's, it's actually going to be a, I think, an interesting budget this year because it's going to take a couple of the, the cabinets back to zero based budgeting, which is the first time that's happened in a lot of years, maybe ever, quite frankly, certainly no time in modern history.

Have we ever zeroed out budgets and built them from scratch?

And again, that is to try to find ways to, to be more effective and efficient, to deliver services in a more economic and practical manner.

There's a lot of work being done already to prepare for the 2026 budget session, and the leaders say that the various work groups and task forces that meet over the summer will start their work soon as well.

For Kentucky Edition, I'm McKenzie Spink.

Thank you.

McKenzie.

And that work that begins in the interim starts June 3rd.

And that's when state lawmakers gather in committees and discuss issues to prepare them for the upcoming 2026 legislative session.