ICYMI: Corbett's plan for healthy Pa.

Lancaster New Era, 09/18/13

Gov. Tom Corbett's plan to accept federal funds to expand coverage to low income Pennsylvanians is a better plan than the president's, both for taxpayers and the working poor.

President Barack Obama's so-called Affordable Care Act invites states to expand Medicaid coverage to those with earnings up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level — about 500,000 in Pennsylvania's case. The federal government would pay 100 percent of a participating state's added cost in the first three years (2014-16) and 90 percent in 2017 and beyond.

Corbett has consistently refused Medicaid expansion, saying it should be reformed, not expanded.

So far, Washington, D.C. and 24 states, including California, New York and New Jersey, plan to take the federal money and expand Medicaid under Obamacare. Eighteen states, including Texas, Virginia and Hawaii, are declining a Medicaid expansion, and eight states, including Ohio and Pennsylvania, are considering it.

Corbett has faced pressure to accept federal Medicaid expansion from hospitals, labor unions, seniors groups and even Republicans in the state Senate, including Sen. Lloyd Smucker, of West Lampeter Township.

To his credit, the governor has given not an inch.

While the "Healthy Pennsylvania" plan Corbett released on Monday at a news conference in Harrisburg is being called a compromise in some quarters, it is completely in line with the concerns he has raised in refusing Medicaid expansion all along.

The Corbett plan would not expand Medicaid in Pennsylvania, instead using federal money to provide private coverage to more of the working poor. That approach would benefit taxpayers, people with private insurance and the very working poor Medicaid expansion aims to help.

Corbett's plan offers the following benefits over expanding Medicaid:

-- It would reduce the costs associated with "churn," or the switching of people from private insurance to Medicaid and back as their incomes and other circumstances change. Under expansion, such churn would no doubt become more common. Besides reducing health costs overall, the Corbett plan would be better for the working poor by letting them select and maintain a private health plan of their choosing.

-- By providing private insurance, in place of expanded Medicaid, to more people, the cost-shifting doctors and hospitals now practice to make up for Medicaid's lower reimbursement rates would be eased rather than exacerbated.

-- The savings of expanding private insurance rather than federal and state spending on Medicaid are a sure winner for taxpayers and for businesses and individuals paying for private health coverage.

To its credit, the Obama administration has already OK'd plans by Arkansas and Iowa to allow the working poor to purchase private health insurance on the health care "exchanges" to be set up under Obamacare.

Where Corbett breaks new ground is in two new requirements it would place on those applying for Medicaid: the able-bodied would have to find or at least be actively seeking work, just as is required now of those getting unemployment benefits; and some would have copays, just as those with private insurance.

While the Obama administration might resist them, there is nothing unreasonable about either of the above proposals. Both aim to make Medicaid recipients more like the rest of us. And, like the plan overall, that should encourage cost-savings and fairness for taxpayers and private-insurance rate-payers.

The Corbett plan is a better plan for Pennsylvania, and one that the president, in the spirit of federalism, should not be afraid to permit.

(“Corbett’s plan for healthy Pa.,” Lancaster New Era, 09/18/13)

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