And another one bites the dust:
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, a former member of House leadership who’s viewed as a possible 2016 presidential candidate, announced he and the feds after months of negotiations agreed to a plan that will cover an estimated 350,000 low-income adult Hoosiers earning under 138 percent of the poverty level, or about $16,105 for an individual. It makes Indiana the 28th state (plus the District of Columbia) to opt into the voluntary coverage expansion….
There are several big changes from the original HIP 1.0 program for HIP 2.0.
People who make under 100% of FPL can’t be dropped for failure to pay premiums; instead they’ll have the option to pay premiums or co-pays with a 5% of family income maximum limit. Premiums are limited to 2% of family income (so a person at 100% FPL is paying no more than they would have with Cost Sharing Assistance Silvers), co-pays are upped for emergency room usage that does not result in an admission (similar to Utah), and the lock-out period for people who make more than 100% FPL but fail to pay premiums is reduced from a year to six months.
The model is a subsidized high deductible plan model. The deductible on a family plan is $2,500 where the recipient is expected to kick in 2% of family income to an HSA. The difference between the 2% of family income and is made up by a state contribution. Once the combined deductible is spent on services, the state/feds pick up 100% of the medical expenses. If expenses in a year are under $2,500 some of that money rolls forward to next year.
CMS, as they have in every other state that has asked turned down the request to tie job or job search requirements to Medicaid eligibility. That is a no go line for CMS.
The final interesting thing to note is that Indiana is going live with this plan next week. Initially most of the membership will probably be conversions from other state run plans as people just were not expecting this, but by the middle of February, newly eligible people will be signing up. I am curious if Healthcare.gov is ready to redirect people to sign up for HIP 2.0? I thought that Indiana could do a fast launch, but a one week launch is surpising to me. I would have guessed a month of final prep time.