Wolf sets timeline to reorganize Medicaid
HARRISBURG — Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration plans to transfer more than a million adult Medicaid enrollees into a new benefits plan in the coming months, officials said Monday, as he goes about dismantling changes his Republican predecessor had sought to make to the program.
The Department of Human Services said it hopes to finish the process by Sept. 30.
When finished, the department expects that every adult on Medicaid will be served by HealthChoices, the program that former Gov. Tom Corbett had sought to replace with a new benefits program called Healthy Pennsylvania.
Healthy Pennsylvania was to go into effect Jan. 1, just as Medicaid’s income guidelines expanded to allow hundreds of thousands more lower-income adults to get coverage under the 2010 federal health care law. It had three plans for three groups, and it introduced a new system for determining who would get which coverage plan.
However, advocates for the poor have sued to stop aspects of Healthy Pennsylvania, the federal government never approved part of it and enrollees have complained the application system was confusing or said they had trouble getting coverage for dialysis, mental health counseling or addiction treatment.
“Our hope is that it will be a lot easier system to navigate,” said Ted Dallas, Wolf’s nominee to lead the Department of Human Services, which runs the Medicaid program in Pennsylvania.
Details of the new HealthChoices plan remain under wraps while the department discusses it with the federal government, which funds most of Medicaid’s services. The department said it plans to publish a description March 21.
Dallas said the new coverage will be similar to that of the HealthChoices coverage that was offered last year. The agency hopes to consolidate Healthy Pennsylvania’s nine zones to be closer to the five zones in the HealthChoices program, Dallas said.
