HERSHEY — Pennsylvania’s expansion of Medicaid, which began earlier this year, has exceeded half a million new enrollees, state officials announced today.
Officials credit the program’s expansion with dropping Pennsylvania’s uninsured rate from 14 percent in 2013 to 8 percent today.
Demographically, most of those who are newly signed-up for the health insurance program that serves low-income people are under age 40, 55 percent are women and 59 percent are white.
More than one in five new enrollees live in Philadelphia, according to state statistics released today in an event at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Hershey. In Allegheny County, more than 42,000 individuals are newly enrolled, according to the state Department of Human Services.
The expansion covers Pennsylvanians age 19 to 64 with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. The state had estimated prior to the expansion that up to 600,000 people would be eligible for the coverage. A single person can earn up to $16,243 a year; couples can earn up to $21,984 and still qualify.
“Safety-net providers and health clinics are seeing more patients with insurance, reducing the burden of uncompensated care,” said Antoinette Kraus, director of advocacy group the Pennsylvania Health Access Network. “Most importantly, though, working Pennsylvanians — school bus drivers, cashiers, hairdressers, home care workers, waitresses, child care workers, the people who keep our communities running — no longer have to live with the fear that one accident or illness could wipe them out financially.”
When Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf took office earlier this year, he enacted an expansion of the Medicaid program, and scrapped the alternative to expansion briefly enacted by his predecessor, Gov. Tom Corbett.
Kate Giammarise: kgiammarise@post-gazette.com or 717-787-4254 or on Twitter @KateGiammarise.
First Published: December 10, 2015, 7:19 p.m.