November 30, 2014
By Mark Levy,
Hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania residents left out of coverage under the 2010 federal health care law now have a chance to get insurance as the state undertakes a massive overhaul to health care for the poor.
On Monday, enrollment begins in the Healthy Pennsylvania program, the name given to Pennsylvania’s Medicaid expansion by outgoing Republican Gov. Tom Corbett. Coverage will begin Jan. 1, and state officials say some 600,000 people – primarily low-income, single working adults – are newly eligible for coverage under guidelines set by the 2010 law.
The application process comes as the Corbett administration is overhauling benefits in Pennsylvania’s existing Medicaid program. That will affect coverage for approximately 900,000 other adults who already are covered by the program, primarily the elderly, disabled, low-income parents or low-income pregnant women.
All can pick from among plans offered by private insurers that the state pays to administer the managed-care coverage.
“This is an extremely complicated policy for the state to implement,” said Joan Alker, who follows state Medicaid policies closely as the executive director of the Georgetown Center for Children and Families in Washington. “That’s a lot of work to get those complicated benefits packages sorted out and figure out who’s going into which plan. And the managed care plans have to know who is getting which benefits package. That’s a heavy lift.”
Medicaid benefits for children under 21 will not be affected. But for the adults, the changes take effect Jan. 1.
Read more here
