Medicaid expansion in Pennsylvania Archives - Safety-Net Association of Pennsylvania

Wolf Asks Ryan to Preserve Medicaid Expansion

In a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf urged Congress, no matter how it addresses the Affordable Care Act, to preserve that law’s expansion of access to Medicaid-covered health care services.
The governor specifically pointed to the many people who receive substance abuse treatment through those services.

If the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, is repealed and not replaced, over a million Pennsylvanians could lose access to health care and tens of thousands of people – people who are our friends, our neighbors, and our family members that are currently receiving treatment for a substance use disorder – would lose insurance coverage and no longer be able to afford their treatment.

See Governor Wolf’s complete letter to House Speaker Ryan here.

PA Safety Net Admin2017-02-15T06:00:28+00:00February 15th, 2017|Affordable Care Act, Uncategorized|Comments Off

Pennsylvania Health Law Project Releases Monthly Newsletter

The Pennsylvania Health Law Project has published the May 2016 edition of Health Law News, its monthly newsletter.
phlp Included in this edition are articles about a new federal managed care regulation and federal policy governing balance billing of dual-eligible (Medicare- and Medicaid-covered) individuals. The newsletter also takes a look at Pennsylvania one year after the state expanded its Medicaid program and offers an update on Community HealthChoices, the new program of managed long-term services and supports the state intends to implement.
Find the latest edition of Health Law News here.

PA Safety Net Admin2016-06-16T06:00:37+00:00June 16th, 2016|Pennsylvania Medicaid laws and regulations, Pennsylvania Medicaid policy|Comments Off

DHS Secretary Describes Initiatives

In an op-ed piece in the Scranton Times-Tribune, Pennsylvania Department of Human Services Secretary Ted Dallas has outlined his organization’s major achievements of 2015 and its plans for 2016.
Among them are the state’s expansion of its Medicaid program and its plans to establish new contracts with HealthChoices managed care organizations that seek to shift the program’s emphasis from volume of care to value and outcomes through greater use of accountable care organizations (ACOs), bundled payments, patient-centered medical homes, and other value-based initiatives.
Find Secretary Dallas’s commentary here.

PA Safety Net Admin2016-01-04T11:40:53+00:00January 4th, 2016|HealthChoices PA, Pennsylvania Medicaid policy|Comments Off

439,000 Added to PA Medicaid Rolls

150,000 Pennsylvanians have enrolled in Medicaid since the Wolf administration officially launched its HealthChoices expansion on April 27.
Added to the 289,000 who enrolled during the Corbett administration’s Healthy Pennsylvania program, that means about 439,000 Pennsylvanians have obtained Medicaid coverage since the state expanded its Medicaid program as authorized by the 2010 federal health care reform law.
To learn more about the latest Medicaid enrollments, their financial impact on the state, and how the HealthChoices expansion works, see this Wolf administration news release.

PA Safety Net Admin2015-07-27T06:00:19+00:00July 27th, 2015|Affordable Care Act, HealthChoices PA, Healthy PA|Comments Off

PA Completes First Phase of Medicaid Transition

Last weekend Pennsylvania’s Department of Human Services (DHS) formally moved more than 121,000 people from the Corbett administration’s Healthy Pennsylvania Medicaid expansion program to the Wolf administration’s expansion of the state’s long-time HealthChoices Medicaid managed care program.
Those who were shifted had enrolled in Healthy Pennsylvania private coverage option (PCO) plans before the end of calendar year 2014. In the next few days they will receive written notification of the shift. All will receive the same Medicaid benefits: a basic adult benefit package.
Individuals will no longer be able to enroll in PCO plans, and over the next few months more than 137,000 Pennsylvanians still in PCO plans will be shifted into HealthChoices plans in stages with completion expected by September 1.
For more information about the continued transition from Healthy Pennsylvania to HealthChoices, see this news release from the governor’s office.

PA Safety Net Admin2015-04-28T06:00:43+00:00April 28th, 2015|HealthChoices PA, Healthy PA, Pennsylvania Medicaid policy|Comments Off

Numbers Link Medicaid Expansion, Diabetes Diagnoses

One of the primary arguments made by the Safety-Net Association of Pennsylvania in favor of state Medicaid reimbursement policies that support the work of safety-net hospitals is that many of the low-income patients they serve have had sporadic contact with the health care system over the years and often present with medical problems that go well beyond the immediate reason that brings them to hospitals.
Now comes new information that supports that argument.
The medical testing company Quest Diagnostics has found that the number of Medicaid patients its testing has found to have diabetes has risen more than 24 percent during two recent six-month review periods in states that have expanded their Medicaid programs while the number of such patients found to have diabetes in states that did not expand their Medicaid programs saw only a 0.4 percent increase in diabetes diagnoses.
Pennsylvania did not expand access to Medicaid during the review periods covered by the Quest analysis but now that it has done so, the problem seems likely to arise in the state.
Because of where they are located, Pennsylvania’s safety-net hospitals serve higher proportions of low-income patients than the typical community hospital and are therefore more likely to be caring for these more challenging patients newly diagnosed with diabetes in the near future.
For more information about the Quest findings and their implications, see this New York Times article. In addition, the latest edition of the journal Diabetes Care presents a study on the subject. See that article here.

PA Safety Net Admin2015-03-26T06:00:08+00:00March 26th, 2015|Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals|Comments Off

PA Updates Medicaid Expansion Timetable

The Pennsylvania Department of Human Services (DHS) has released a timetable for its planned transition from the Corbett administration’s Healthy Pennsylvania Medicaid expansion to its expansion of the state’s previous Medicaid program.
According to a DHS news release,

Phase 1

This phase will begin in April 2015 and be completed by June 1, 2015.
Individuals who were enrolled in the General Assistance and Select Plan program in December 2014 will begin to be transferred from the private coverage option (PCO) to the new streamlined Adult benefit package.
New applicants will no longer be enrolled in the PCO and will be enrolled in the new Adult benefit package with coverage provided by the HealthChoices managed care organizations.

Phase 2

This phase will begin in July 2015 and be completed by September 30, 2015.
All remaining PCO enrollees will transition from PCO plans into the HealthChoices by September 1, 2015.

For a closer look at the plan for Medicaid expansion, see this DHS news release.

PA Safety Net Admin2015-03-10T06:00:35+00:00March 10th, 2015|Pennsylvania Medicaid policy|Comments Off

SNAP Looks to the Future

With the inauguration of a new governor and the start of a new legislative session, the Safety-Net Association of Pennsylvania (SNAP) has prepared a series of four papers for leaders of the new Wolf administration and legislative and committee leaders and staff.
The fourth of those papers, released this week, addresses the importance of innovation in addressing the challenges safety-net hospitals face in leading the way to serving Pennsylvania’s growing Medicaid population.
The paper describes the new demands being made of hospitals by insurers, government, and others; tools through which to pursue innovation; the goals of future innovation; and the role that SNAP and safety-net hospitals must play in that innovation.
The first paper, “What is SNAP?”, was an introduction to the Safety-Net Association of Pennsylvania: what safety-net hospitals are, where they are located, whom they serve, and how they differ from other acute-care hospitals in the state.
The second paper, “The Challenges Pennsylvania Safety-Net Hospitals Face,” describes the special role safety-net hospitals play in serving low-income and medically vulnerable Pennsylvanians and the emerging challenges they face in fulfilling this vital role.
The third paper, “Transitioning Medicaid: Principles for Changing Course on Medicaid Expansion,” presents eight principles SNAP believes state officials should follow if they choose to abandon the Healthy Pennsylvania model of Medicaid expansion in favor of a more traditional approach to expanding the state’s Medicaid expansion.
Find all four SNAP papers here.

PA Safety Net Admin2015-02-12T10:43:14+00:00February 12th, 2015|Pennsylvania Medicaid policy, Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals, Safety-Net Association of Pennsylvania|Comments Off

Wolf Administration to Shift Gears on Medicaid Expansion

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf has taken the first step to short-circuit the state’s Healthy Pennsylvania Medicaid expansion in favor of a more traditional approach to Medicaid expansion.
In a news release issued yesterday, the Wolf administration announced that it will withdraw Pennsylvania’s request for a second tier of medical benefits for Medicaid recipients because it intends to change the state’s program to offer the same benefits to all participants.
This will be the first step toward building the state’s Affordable Care Act-authorized Medicaid expansion around the state’s HealthChoices-oriented structure instead of the private market insurance plans favored by Mr. Wolf’s predecessor, former Governor Tom Corbett.
Learn more about the new administration’s first step toward changing the state’s Medicaid expansion effort in this news release from the governor’s office.

PA Safety Net Admin2015-02-10T06:00:13+00:00February 10th, 2015|Pennsylvania Medicaid policy|Comments Off

Medicaid Expansion Glitch Hits Drug and Alcohol Patients, Providers

A flaw in the implementation of Pennsylvania’s Medicaid expansion has left many of the state’s Medicaid beneficiaries with no coverage for the treatment of their drug and alcohol problems – and some providers without payment for some care they have delivered.
Under the Healthy Pennsylvania Medicaid expansion program, beneficiaries with extensive health problems, like drug and alcohol issues, were supposed to be directed into the state’s “Healthy Plus” Medicaid benefits package, which covers services that address such problems. Instead, many were places in private, state-approved insurance plans for Medicaid beneficiaries, which do not cover those services.
State officials are aware of the problem and say they will soon have a plan to fix it.
Learn more about this glitch in Pennsylvania’s Medicaid expansion and how state officials hope to address it in this Philadelphia Inquirer article.

PA Safety Net Admin2015-01-30T06:00:14+00:00January 30th, 2015|Healthy PA, Pennsylvania Medicaid policy|Comments Off

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