FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE             CONTACT: Chris Kellogg
September 17, 2003                          502-564-2611 or 502-682-7774                     

Governor Patton’s response to the vote this afternoon by the General Assembly’s joint Health and Welfare Committee.  The committee voted unanimously to ask Patton to withdraw the emergency regulation, which was accepted by the Administrative Regulation Committee last week a brought the Medicaid budget in line with the legislature’s appropriate.

          “I certainly will not withdraw the regulation but I welcome any solution to the Medicaid funding problem that confronts Kentucky and am prepared to call a special legislative session at any time the legislature has a solution to propose.  Our administration does not have the luxury to demagogue this issue.  When the legislature fails to appropriate sufficient funding for the state’s Medicaid responsibilities and then does not support our efforts to live within their budget, we will not sit by as accomplice to putting the program in a more dire situation than already exists.   The process should be allowed to work and the committee can take it up again when it meets in October.”

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