HARRISBURG — Health care advocates who began reading Gov. Tom Corbett’s detailed proposal today to bring billions of federal health care dollars to Pennsylvania criticized it as unnecessarily punitive toward potential enrollees and laden with red tape.

The proposal that Corbett calls fiscally responsible also contains a long list of requests for the federal government to waive rules that would otherwise apply to the health care coverage that a state Medicaid program must provide.

“I read a lot of waivers and I have never seen such a long list of waiver requests,” said Joan Alker, the executive director of Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families in Washington, D.C.

The proposal was unveiled this morning. It adds crucial details to the broad outlines of a proposal Corbett announced in September to extend coverage to half-a-million people and it kicks off what could be a long process of public review and negotiations with the federal government.

Under President Barack Obama’s health care law, the federal government promises to foot the lion’s share of the bill for any state that broadens its Medicaid eligibility guidelines to cover more low-income adults starting Jan. 1.

Medicaid traditionally covers the poor and disabled, including children and their parents, pregnant women and the elderly in nursing homes. The Medicaid expansion would primarily benefit healthier adults who work in low-wage jobs, and the conditions that Corbett wants target that group.

Corbett said his proposal encourages personal responsibility, better matches benefits to a person’s health needs and makes Medicaid more like a private insurance plan.

He wants to use Medicaid expansion dollars to buy private insurance policies for the newly eligible, rather than cover them under the traditional Medicaid program, an idea pioneered by Arkansas.

Corbett wants to eliminate all co-pays but one in favor of a new premium structure that requires many able-bodied, working-age enrollees to pay a monthly premium to keep the coverage or risk losing it for up to nine months. Those premiums can be reduced if the enrollee pays on time and completes an annual health risk assessment and physical, but the administration also wants the ability to change or expand that list.

A health screening questionnaire would determine whether someone has any complex medical conditions, and the state would determine whether a person is a high risk, and thus eligible for a broader benefits package, or low risk, and subject to a narrower benefits package.

Corbett also wants to require the able-bodied who are working under 20 hours a week to meet certain work-search goals.

“It seems like it’s making an awful lot of red tape that will prevent people from being able to get and keep their medical insurance,” said Richard Weishaupt, a lawyer with Community Legal Services of Philadelphia.

Alker, of Georgetown’s Center for Children and Families, called the proposals enormously complicated.

“The federal government cannot approve it,” Alker said. “It is going to not only jeopardize the federal money, he’s jeopardizing the health of those who could be getting health coverage starting Jan. 1.”