Sep 18, 2013 3 min read

HARRISBURG – Top aides to Gov. Tom Corbett plan to meet Monday with officials from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the first such meeting since he released his plan to use federal Medicaid expansion dollars to extend health insurance to hundreds of thousands of the working poor.

The meeting comes amid criticism that Corbett’s plan will leave people uninsured when the extra Medicaid money becomes available Jan. 1.

The plan released Monday by Corbett, a Republican and critic of Medicaid, will require potentially lengthy negotiations with the federal government to sort out changes Corbett wants to the Medicaid expansion envisioned by President Barack Obama’s signature health care law.

Even if those changes are approved by the federal government, a process including time for public comment, some analysts doubt that every element of Corbett’s plan will receive approval, but administration officials aren’t saying how they will respond or whether they are open to compromise.

“Because we think so much of this is grounded in good policy and is reasonable, we’re not seeing how any of this won’t be approved and approved quickly,” said Todd Shamash, a deputy chief of staff to Corbett.

The sides have been talking for about nine months.

Corbett’s plan is getting early support from the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry, along with groups representing hospitals, doctors and nursing homes.

Corbett’s plan hinges on insuring newly eligible adults through private insurance policies, rather than expanding Medicaid rolls, and that could require Pennsylvania to raise Medicaid’s taxpayer-paid reimbursement rates.

Last year, the Corbett administration said the Medicaid expansion, plus other requirements of the health care law, would result in more than $4 billion in costs to Pennsylvania taxpayers over eight years.

Corbett has not released an estimate of how much this plan would cost taxpayers.

That is because the administration is proposing to align the Medicaid coverage to a private insurance plan – the so-called silver plan that promises to cover 70 percent of costs on average – whose overall cost has not yet been determined, Shamash said.

Silver plans would have the second-lowest premiums of four coverage levels available through the online, government-run marketplaces that will allow small business owners and individuals to compare insurance policies side-by-side.

Administration officials hope to drive down the cost of commercial plans available through the insurance marketplace by adding more shoppers to it.

Under the law, the federal government is to cover the entire cost of a state’s new Medicaid enrollees in 2014 through 2016 before the federal share begins to gradually drop to 90 percent.

The money is designed to insure those who earn up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $31,000 for a family of four.

That would mean coverage for about 520,000 uninsured Pennsylvania adults who are newly eligible, the Corbett administration said.