A half-million more low-income Pennsylvanians are in line to get federally funded health insurance after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services approved the state’s plan to accept Medicaid expansion money under the landmark 2010 federal health care law, officials said Thursday.

The Corbett administration said the federal agency approved a plan that lets private insurers administer Medicaid-funded coverage that adheres to Medicaid’s existing rules. The plan vastly expands a Medicaid program that already covers 2.2 million adults and children in Pennsylvania.

Enrollment in the plan, named Healthy Pennsylvania, is expected to begin Dec. 1 with coverage to start the following Jan. 1.

The Medicaid expansion money became available Jan. 1 of this year, and Corbett was under pressure from hospitals, labor unions, the AARP and advocates for the poor to accept it to cover hundreds of thousands of low-income working adults.

But Corbett, a critic of President Barack Obama’s signature health care law, refused to accept the money without changes to the Medicaid expansion as it was envisioned by the law. He proposed ways to make the Medicaid coverage more like private insurance, including waiving some of the program’s permissive coverage rules.

Under the approved plan, incentives will be offered to enrollees to lower their premiums.