The Kansas Statehouse in Topeka.

TOPEKA — Kansas legislators approved a health and public welfare bill Monday that would reduce prescription drug costs within the state’s Medicaid program and make changes to eligibility for public assistance.

Senators voted 27-13 in favor of the measure early Monday after the House approved it in a 79-43 vote. The measure will now go to Gov. Sam Brownback, who has touted welfare reform in the past.

The Kansas House initially voted 69-52 against the measure Sunday, sending it to a conference committee where negotiators added more patient protections to the so-called step therapy provision that would require participants to try a less expensive drug before being allowed to get a more expensive one.

However, patients with multiple sclerosis would be able to switch to another drug after a 30-day trial if the medication is found unsuitable for them. Patients who have already tried a drug and discontinued it because it was ineffective or had adverse effects also would be exempted from the therapy.

A provision in the measure also requires that the organization administering the drug respond to a physician’s request to override the step-therapy requirement within 72 hours.

Republican leaders saw the measure as crucial to resolving budget issues because it would reduce the state’s costs in providing health coverage to poor and disabled residents by nearly $11 million a year.

Republican Rep. Barbara Bollier, of Mission Hills, said during a House debate late Sunday that the move to cut costs undermined the needs of poor people. “It’s a way of people meddling in medical practice rather than letting the doctors do what’s best for the patient,” she said.

The bill also would reduce the lifetime limit on cash assistance from 36 to 24 months, though the state can grant an extension up to 12 months. The Department of Children and Families also would be required to monitor welfare recipients who repeatedly replace benefit cards. Winners of lotteries over $5,000 would be investigated by the state to determine their eligibility for public assistance.

Each able-bodied household member receiving cash assistance would be required to work, participate in a job training program or search for work. However, mothers of newborn babies would be exempted from the work requirement for up to 3 months.

The changes in public assistance eligibility are a continuation of the 2015 HOPE Act, a law designed to move families off welfare and into the workforce. In 2014 before the program began, about 17,700 residents were receiving temporary cash assistance a month, most of them children. By March 2016 the number dropped to about 12,800, according to DCF.

Wichita Republican Sen. Michael O’Donnell, Chairman of the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee, said the state’s welfare reform has revealed “incredible results.”

“The best way out of poverty is a good education and a job,” O’Donnell said, adding that the state would partner with community colleges and technical schools to provide training under the reform. “Once they’re off of welfare and they have a job, then they’re paying taxes into the whole system and they’re going to have a higher quality of life with additional pay.”

But Shannon Cotsoradis, chief executive officer of Kansas Action for Children, argued that parents who are trying to better their lives through education should still have access to public assistance that allows them to provide their family with basic necessities.

“Achieving a higher level of education or vocational training takes time for families, particularly those that are struggling with the daily demands of living in poverty, so that’s going to be a long-term fix,” Cotsoradis said. “In the meantime we need to make sure that those kids have a place to sleep, shoes on their feet, food to eat and diapers.”

Cotsoradis said that the reduction in lifetime limits for public assistance could leave children hungry and homeless. The state has decreased the amount of children on cash assistance it serves monthly by over 60 percent since 2007. But at the same time, the childhood poverty rate has increased by 20 percent, Cotsoradis said.