State lawmakers also considered changes to Medicaid eligibility today.

A Louisville Republican says House Bill two would reduce costs while covering health care for Kentucky's most vulnerable.

But as our John LaFleur reports, local health advocates have some concerns.

This Louisville Republican wants to reduce the cost of running the state's Medicaid program.

A medicaid budget has nearly doubled, in fact, over doubled over the past five years to an unsustainable level.

Congressional Republicans echoed those concerns last year when they passed the big beautiful bill, which mandates new copays and work or community engagement requirements for certain Medicaid recipients.

That has a lot of criteria involves community engagement, cost sharing, eligibility and integrity.

State Representative Ken Fleming proposes House Bill two to mirror those federal changes.

But health advocates say it goes too far.

Well, there's no question that we must comply with federal law.

It's important to ensure that House Bill two strikes the right balance to protect our health care safety net, to keep eligible Kentuckians enrolled, and to ensure that co-pays don't reduce access to critical care.

House Bill two requires more data matching a process to verify someone's identity, address, and income.

A Louisville Democrat worries this will wrongly kick people off Medicaid.

No, my question is why does it immediately lead them to ineligibility with the chance to appeal, as opposed to allowing the individual to provide feedback to correct, perhaps misinformation?

They will receive a notice that they need to go through and verify, their status.

Yes, there is an appeals process to go through that, but they will not be taken off immediately.

A former state worker says data sources mentioned in House Bill two aren't always correct.

Some specifics about that.

The Paris matches are mentioned in there.

That's the Public Assistance Reporting Information system.

Those are updated quarterly.

So the information in those matches is sometimes up to six months old.

Last year, the state auditor reported that Kentucky has paid millions to insure people living outside Kentucky, though other states fell into this trap.

It's one reason Republicans want to better track who's enrolled in the program.

And we need to take some corrective action in order to help get a more, more transparent, more accountable, more responsible, Medicaid program.

House Bill two passed an Appropriations and Revenue Committee in a 14 to 4 vote.

Democrats and one Republican voted no.

For Kentucky edition, I'm John Leffler.

Thank you so much, June.

House Bill two also establishes accountability measures for managed care organizations, or macOS, as they're often called.

These companies profited off the out of state Medicaid recipients found in the state auditor's report.