Local advocates today encouraged state officials to accept the expansion of Medicaid, which they said would provide insurance to another 350,000 state residents.
Lehigh Valley advocates joined a statewide effort today to encourage state officials to accept the expansion of Medicaid, which they said would provide insurance to another 350,000 state residents.
The Medicaid expansion is fully funded by the federal government for the first three years and then at 90 percent thereafter, officials said. Pennsylvania is giving up $43 billion in federal aid if it says no to the expansion, officials said.
“Have we come to the point that we’re so anti-government in our ideology that we would turn back $43 billion we already paid for and not give people the care they deserve?” said Alan Jennings, executive director of the Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley.
Gov. Tom Corbett initially said no to accepting the Medicaid expansion but has since been further researching the issue. He met two weeks ago with U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and is still waiting for answers to questions from that meeting, Corbett spokeswoman Christine Cronkright said.
Corbett may agree to the Medicaid expansion if the state can make reforms to the program, Cronkright said.
“He wants to look about how we can make this program more sustainable in the long term,” she said. “We think we can cover more people in Pennsylvania if we’re given the flexibility to do so.”
The state Legislature also would have to accept the federal Medicaid funding as part of the 2013-2014 budget, which has to be passed by July 1, said Athena Ford, the advocacy director for the Pennsylvania Health Access Network.
The federal Affordable Care Act is expected to drop Pennsylvania’s uninsured rate from 12.7 percent down to 8.1 percent, according to a recent study commissioned by the Hospital and Healthcare Association of Pennsylvania. Accepting the Medicaid expansion will drop the rate further to 4.8 percent, the study found.
The Medicaid expansion would give health care to anyone earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level — about $15,400 for a single person and $31,800 for a family of four.
“These are, in many cases, people that work but don’t have health insurance,” said the Rev. Dennis Ritter, executive director of the Lutheran Congregational Services in Allentown. “We think it’s important to care for those who are the most vulnerable and certainly health care is one of these things.”
Expanding Medicaid is expected to create 40,000 new jobs and $3.2 billion in annual economic development, officials said. Having more people with health insurance will allow them to go to the doctors more frequently, leading to more jobs in the health care field and related industries, officials said.
Peter Schweyer, Sacred Heart Hospital’s director of government and community relations and an Allentown councilman, said government officials fall over themselves to cut one ribbon but expanding Medicaid will bring an incredible amount of economic development at no cost to the state.
Schweyer said he didn’t see why any state would turn down such significant money from the federal government.
“Those states aren’t getting a federal tax cut; they aren’t getting federal money for anything else. It’s just gone,” he said.