COVID Drives Major Increase in PA Medicaid Enrollment
Medicaid enrollment in Pennsylvania has risen nearly 14 percent in the past year as rising unemployment resulting from COVID-19 drives people to turn to the state for health insurance.
As a result, Pennsylvania has added nearly 400,000 people to its Medicaid rolls in the past year. Today, 3.2 million Pennsylvanians are enrolled in the state’s program, although among them are approximately 250,000 who would have been dropped from the program except for a federal requirement that the state not drop people from the program in exchange for a major increase in federal aid for the state’s program.
As a result of the increase, the state’s Department of Human Services, which runs its Medicaid program, has asked the legislature for nearly $1 billion in supplemental funding to help finance its services for this expanded enrollment through the rest of the state’s FY 2021 year.
Learn more about the past year’s increase in Medicaid enrollment, who the new enrollees are, and how the state is accommodating them in the Philadelphia Inquirer article “A huge spike in Medicaid enrollment in Pa. shows how devastating the coronavirus has been.”
The report includes recommendations for:
The Department of Health has 
The number of new COVID-19 cases has fallen significantly since November and December but the decline has ended and the daily numbers now generally are higher than they have been in recent weeks.
According to a DHS news release, the RAHCs will “…lead efforts to address social determinants of health, reduce health disparities, and promote equity and value in health care” as part of “…a partnership between the Wolf Administration, Medicaid managed care organizations, hospitals and health systems, and community-based health and social service providers and organizations.”
The moratorium on the two percent sequestration of Medicare payments could be extended under a bill the U.S. House of Representatives may consider this week.
SNAP has urged Congress to extend the Medicare sequestration delay on a number of occasions, doing so most recently in this 
Acting Secretary of Health Beam issued an order making March 31 the date by which all vaccine providers should have Phase 1A-eligible Pennsylvanians’ vaccine appointments scheduled. See 
Around the State
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
The number of new COVID-19 cases has fallen significantly since November and December but the decline has leveled off this month.
Governor Tom Wolf and the COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force announced that Pennsylvania will use the Johnson & Johnson (Janssen) single-dose COVID-19 vaccine to vaccinate teachers and school staff members. Learn more from 
Included in this month’s edition are articles about:
RISE PA” – “RISE” is short for “Resource Information and Services Enterprise” – is, according to DHS, a “…collaborative effort between multiple state agencies, counties, and local non-profits and community organizations, health care, and social services providers” that will “…serve as an access point to search and obtain meaningful information to help Pennsylvanians find and access the services they need to achieve overall well-being and improve health outcomes” while serving as a “…care coordination system for providers…and a closed-loop referral system that will report on the outcome of referrals.”