Good news (via Politico) for Pennsylvania:
Republican Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett is planning a Monday press conference to throw his support behind a version of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, industry and legislative sources tell POLITICO.
Corbett’s eyeing versions of expansion that rely on private-sector health plans rather than adding to the public Medicaid rolls, similar to approaches being considered in Iowa and Arkansas, according to the sources. The approach would bring in billions of Obamacare dollars marked for states that back expansion and use them to buy private insurance for the state’s poorest residents.
Medicaid expansion is a good thing for the working poor in Pennsylvania. The Oregon study strongly indicated that Medicaid significantly improves health and quality of life for its recipients. Pennsylvania is one of the last Obama voting states that had been holding out and it is a large hold-out.
The bad news on this probable announcment is that the expansion is being done in a cockamanie manner designed to prove that government can’t work. Simply expanding state Medicaid elibigibility rules would be faster and cheaper (as Medicaid pays a low reimbursement rate) than sending people to exchanges for products that have yet to be designed. Two steps forwards, one step back and then a piroutte towards social justice…..