Three companies, one term, one payment a month
KanCare is the state’s Medicaid program. Two departments administer it: the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, and KDADS, which is Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services[4]. Almost all of it is delivered under contract rather than by a state agency. On May 14, 2024 the health department announced that three managed care organizations would serve the program from January 1, 2025 through December 31, 2027: Sunflower Health Plan and United Healthcare Community Plan, both already holding contracts, and Healthy Blue[2].
The money moves as capitation. The state pays each plan a fixed amount per beneficiary per month, in arrears for the month of eligibility, and the payment is made whether or not the person used a service. KanCare capitation payments totaled $464,901,290 for July 2026[1]. That single design decision is what makes the enrollment figure trustworthy and the utilization figures harder.
The scale of the whole program, in one month: total Kansas medical assistance expenditure for July 2026 came to $498,330,422, of which the capitation payments above were the larger part[1]. The report puts the average cost per beneficiary at $1,178 for the month and $294 for the week, against $310 a week over the same period a year earlier, a fall of 5.0 percent.
Who is in it
The state recorded 392,726 KanCare beneficiaries in July 2026. Total medical assistance beneficiaries for the same month came to 423,039, so 30,313 people were receiving Kansas medical assistance outside managed care, on fee for service[1]. The same report puts the total a year earlier at 430,665, a fall of 1.8 percent.
| Population group | Beneficiaries |
|---|---|
| Temporary Assistance for Families and poverty level eligible | 213,395 |
| Children’s Health Insurance Program | 55,667 |
| SSI aged, blind and disabled, not dual eligible | 23,278 |
| Long-term care, dual eligible | 21,436 |
| Foster care | 15,367 |
| M-CHIP | 14,705 |
| SSI aged, blind and disabled, dual eligible | 10,368 |
| All KanCare beneficiaries | 392,726 |
How a determination is made, and where the numbers behind it live
Eligibility runs on modified adjusted gross income for most groups, and the method is published. Section 5000 of the Kansas Family Medical Assistance Manual, currency date September 1, 2026, sets out what counts as income, whose income counts in a budget unit, and how the income of a child living with parents or of a claimed tax dependent is treated[5].
Nowhere in that section is there an income standard, a dollar figure or a share of poverty. At the one point where it names a threshold amount it hands the reader to a chart the manual calls F-8, the Kansas Medical Assistance Standards, held on a state policy site that refuses automated requests[5]. So the state’s own limits are not printed on this page. The one published Kansas percentage is a projection boundary rather than a rule, and the coverage gap piece sets it out and says whose it is. The department that publishes the chart is the Division of Health Care Finance.
The coverage groups themselves are published and are categorical: children under 19 through Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program, with monthly family premiums of $20 to $50 in some income bands; expectant mothers; adult non-disabled non-elderly parents and caregivers of children under 19; and people aged 65 and over and people with disabilities, who may also receive home and community based services as an alternative to institutional care[4].
For beneficiaries who hold both, KanCare and Medicare are not alternatives. The department describes KanCare as usable alongside Medicare benefits, covering some services Medicare does not, nursing home and long-term care among them, and as a route to financial assistance with Medicare Part D costs[4]. The Medical Assistance Report counts those people separately as dual eligible throughout, which is why several of its population lines, long-term care included, split into a dual row and a non-dual row[1].
Two warnings the report makes about itself
The first concerns what a count is. Consumer counts in the report are based on payments rather than on eligibility. Every KanCare beneficiary is counted once a month because a capitation payment is made for them regardless of use, while people outside KanCare on fee for service are counted only when a provider submits a claim, and providers sometimes hold claims, so one month can be inflated by the previous month’s late billing[1].
The second concerns time. Prior months are not refreshed, so a figure read from an older edition of the report will not match the same month read from a newer one. The report is also refreshed in place at a fixed address, and the address currently serves fiscal year 2027 while carrying an older fiscal year in the titles search engines hold for it. The fiscal year has to be read off the document.
Two counts of the same thing that do not match, and why that is fine
13.4 percent of Kansans, about 389,000 people, reported Medicaid coverage at some point during 2024 in the American Community Survey[3]. The state counted 392,726 KanCare beneficiaries in a single month two years later. The two figures come out close and they are not the same measurement: one is a survey of what people say they had across a calendar year, the other an administrative record of who a payment was made for in July. Neither corrects the other.
One group inside the KanCare count reaches into a different section of this publication. 21,436 dual eligible and 3,211 non-dual beneficiaries were in the report’s long-term care category in July 2026, which the report defines as including nursing facilities, Money Follows the Person for the frail elderly and the physically disabled, and the physically disabled and frail elderly waivers[1]. Where those beds are, and how many of them there are, is an aging and veterans subject; this publication's front page indexes both sections.
The naming is a third trap. KanCare is the managed care arrangement, Kansas Medicaid is the program, and the Kansas Medical Assistance Report is the record of both plus the fee-for-service population outside them[1]. A figure labeled Kansas Medicaid can be any of the three, and the labels are used loosely nearly everywhere except inside the report itself.