Kansas health-care reform official resigns

Late Friday afternoon, the Kansas Health Policy Authority confirmed that its executive director, Marcia Nielsen, would soon be leaving the agency that’s responsible for spending all of the state’s health-care dollars and advising lawmakers on health-care policy (presumably so they can make good decisions about how to reform it). Nielsen was a key figure in former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ efforts to try to fix health care in Kansas.

Nielsen will take a job as Vice Chancellor of Public Policy and Planning at KU Med Center, so she’ll still be working on the issues. But it’s hard not to interpret Nielsen’s move as an evacuation, now that Sebelius is gone. That’s because the Kansas Legislature remains controlled by Republicans who aren’t exactly open to real health-care reform and, jeez, if Mark Parkinson’s coal-plant cave-in last week is any indication, the new governor might not be very helpful either.

Anyway, the Kansas Health Institute broke the story on Friday. In fact, the KHI seems like the best source of all health-care news in the state. The Pitch can’t get to Topeka as much as we’d like to, so if you want to keep up on on the topic, subscribe here.