INDIANAPOLIS— A long line of hospital officials and advocates for low-income Hoosiers voiced their support for a proposal to extend health coverage to 400,000 more Hoosiers through the state’s health savings account-based program during a public hearing here Wednesday.
It was one of this week’s two required hearings on a proposal that Gov. Mike Pence’s administration submitted to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which is handling the implementation of President Barack Obama’s health care law.
The Pence administration has proposed using the Healthy Indiana Plan, which requires participants to make contributions of up to 5 percent of their income and uses a $1,100 health savings account, as the vehicle for that expansion. If the federal government says yes, Pence says, only then will he decide whether to go forward.
Hospital executives said they want Indiana to pursue the expansion — and the 30,000 health care industry jobs and $10 billion in federal funding it could draw to the state over the next decade.
As a program that currently covers 40,000 low-income Hoosiers, HIP enjoys “widespread political and public support,” said Brad Smith, the chief executive officer of Rush Memorial Hospital in Rushville.
“It has been a proven success, and I have seen what it means to patients,” Smith said.
He said his brother-in-law discovered that he is diabetic while completing a master’s program to become a minister, and only sought treatment after enrolling in HIP because he “was embarrassed to seek the medical help he needed because he did not have the means to pay.”
The Indiana Hospital Association continued its lobbying efforts for the expansion on Wednesday.
“We believe HIP has been a success and should be continued,” said the group’s president, Doug Leonard. “Indiana will be well-served if HIP is soon renewed and extended to even more of our state’s uninsured citizens.”
A second hearing is scheduled for 12:30 p.m. CDT Friday at the Statehouse.
It comes a week after a dust-up between Pence and Democrats. Pence’s administration submitted its application to expand Medicaid through the Healthy Indiana Plan to the federal government weeks ago — well before the mandatory public hearings. Federal officials responded with a letter saying Indiana needed to hold those hearings before they could consider that application.
Democrats complained that the Pence administration’s handling of the Medicaid expansion would result in lawmakers having no say in the issue, because it would push any final decisions beyond the April 29 conclusion of this year’s legislative session.
Democrats have called for legislation that would trigger an expansion of the traditional Medicaid program if federal officials tell the state it can’t use HIP as the vehicle. But Pence has rejected that proposal.