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State Halts Healthy Indiana Plan Enrollment

Kreg Steppe
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https://www.flickr.com/photos/spyndle/535493117

Indiana is cutting off enrollment in the Healthy Indiana Plan after the program reached this year’s funding limit.

When the federal government reauthorized HIP, the health insurance program for low-income Hoosiers, last year, it required Indiana to lower the income eligibility ceiling from 200-percent of poverty – about $47,000 a year for a family of four – to 100-percent – roughly $23,000 dollars a year. 

The state pays for the program through the tobacco tax, limiting its size to a monthly average of 45,000 people. 

Earlier this year, enrollment was below that average…but the program has now swelled to about 52,000 people.  And the Family and Social Services Administration announced it will only enroll eligible Hoosiers who sent in applications before Thursday. 

FSSA spokesman Jim Gavin says there’s a remote chance more Hoosiers could enroll later this year.

“If something would happen where enrollment would dip significantly to where we saw that the average was going to be projected to come in below 45,000, it’s conceivable but not probable that we would open the program back up,” Gavin says.

The state is asking the federal government to approve HIP 2.0, which would significantly expand the program beginning next year using federal Medicaid dollars. 

Brandon Smith is excited to be working for public radio in Indiana. He has previously worked in public radio as a reporter and anchor in mid-Missouri for KBIA Radio out of Columbia. Prior to that, he worked for WSPY Radio in Plano, Illinois as a show host, reporter, producer and anchor. His first job in radio was in another state capitol, in Jefferson City, Missouri, as a reporter for three radio stations around Missouri. Brandon graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia with a Bachelor of Journalism in 2010, with minors in political science and history. He was born and raised in Chicago.
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