Indiana Medicaid plan under Pence seen as model for attack on health care
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2012 ruling that made the Medicaid expansion provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) optional, many states with Republican governors refused to implement an expansion. Under the ACA, better known as Obamacare, the eligibility cutoff for the government health insurance program for the poor was raised to an income of up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line.
In Indiana under then-governor and now Vice President Mike Pence, the state took a different route, developing an expansion plan that is today serving as a model for state and federal efforts to privatize Medicaid, the federal program which currently provides health coverage to one-sixth of insured Americans, some 70 million people.
In 2015 the state of Indiana introduced a Medicaid expansion plan, the Healthy Indiana Plan 2.0 (HIP 2.0), which converts the entitlement program into a fee-based insurance program. It requires the state’s poorest residents to pay a monthly income-based fee into the program or face a reduction or potential loss in coverage. It also introduces a tiered system of coverage, with those patients who wish to have dental and vision coverage required to pay more.
Under the HIP 2.0 plan, Indiana residents with incomes between 105 percent to 138 percent of the federal poverty level must pay a monthly premium of two percent of their income into a health savings account, dubbed a POWER account (Personal Wellness and Responsibility). This qualifies them for the HIP plus plan, which includes dental and vision coverage. For an individual making $16,394 (138 percent of the federal poverty line) per year, this works out to $27 per month and $55 for a family of four with an income of $33,500. Those residents with incomes between 0-105 percent of the poverty line pay a fee of $1 per month.
Read more: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/05/heal-a05.html
With the exception of the last paragraph of this article from the World Socialist Web Site this article presents some sound information as to what is happening to health care around the nation and what may happen if the Indiana Medicaid plan is adopted elsewhere.
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