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May 7, 2010

Hill, Carson send health care memo to Daniels

Medicaid director says Healthy Indiana Plan doesn’t have to cease

By DANIEL SUDDEATH Daniel.Suddeath@newsandtribune.com

>>SOUTHERN INDIANA — The Healthy Indiana Plan does not have to be terminated because of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, according to the director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS.

In March, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels ordered the state’s medical savings accounts for low-income adults through the Healthy Indiana Plan, or HIP, to be phased out. He also closed HIP for new enrollees.

Daniels said Hoosiers enrolled in the state plan would be picked up by Medicaid through the new federal health care overhaul.

“I see no reason to add people to the rolls of a program whose days are numbered,” Daniels told The Associated Press.

But in a memo addressed to U.S. Rep. Baron Hill, D-Ind., CMS Director Cynthia Mann stated, “Indiana is in no way required to terminate its Healthy Indiana Plan,” which is approved through Dec. 31, 2012.

Hill and Rep. André Carson, D-Ind., voted in favor of the Affordable Care Act and requested the CMS information be sent to Daniels.

Daniels, a Republican who has been outspoken in his criticism of the federal health care plan, stated in a March news release that the federal rules would force the 45,000 families covered by HIP to take Medicaid.

Thus they would “lose the cost saving and quality advantages of consumer-driven health care”, Daniels said.

Mann stated the federal plan will aid the state since Indiana pays the full costs of HIP. In 2014, adults that become eligible to enroll in Medicaid will receive benchmark benefit coverage at little to no expense, she said.

“Health insurance reform will bring relief to the Indiana budget as well as more comprehensive coverage to adults with incomes under 133 percent of poverty,” Mann said.

Beginning in 2014, parents and childless adults that make less than 133 percent of the poverty level will be eligible for Medicaid.

The four-page memo from Mann that answers a series of questions about the bill also addresses Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller’s threat of joining other states in a lawsuit challenging the federal act.

“This is nothing new. Historically, opponents of reform have turned to the courts when major legislation they disagree with is signed into law,” she said.

The Social Security, Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts were also contested in court, Mann continued.

“Constitutional challenges were brought to all three of these monumental pieces of legislation and all three were upheld,” Mann said.

Daniels has been critical of the federal bill since debate on health care reform resumed in 2009.

Most recently, Daniels informed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on April 30 that Indiana will not expand the state’s high-risk insurance pool program through the federal health care act.

In a joint statement released by Hill and Carson, the congressmen said they wanted to “make sure the governor has accurate information to address the concerns and questions he has raised.”

“The governor is certainly entitled to his political viewpoints on the health care reform law — and he’s made those opinions very clear,” Carson and Hill stated. “But now that this historic legislation is law, it’s important that Hoosiers have factual, accurate information about the health benefits made available through these news provisions.”

But Daniels countered in an e-mail to The Evening News and Tribune that Hill is “understandably nervous about the perfectly obvious negative effects of his bill on health care costs, premiums and taxes.”

“He voted for this disastrous bill despite the fact that two-thirds of Hoosiers asked him not to, despite the fact that its unfunded mandates will drain state funds from education and threaten future tax increases,” Daniels said.

“No self-serving propaganda from the Obama administration changes any of this.”

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