Pennsylvania has a real reason to celebrate! In case you missed it: yesterday Governor Wolf announced that Pennsylvania will implement full Medicaid Expansion under the Affordable Care Act.

This important step will benefit millions of low-income Pennsylvanians. True Medicaid expansion will make health care available to more people, many of whom would have encountered benefit limits and bureaucratic nightmares under the last administration’s “Healthy Pennsylvania” program.

And, Medicaid expansion is great news for Pennsylvania’s finances, injecting billions of dollars of federal funds into the economy. In fact, federal funds will cover 100% of the cost of expansion through 2016, gradually declining to 90 percent.

We applaud Governor Wolf and the Department of Human Services for increasing access to health care and eliminating costly, bureaucratic barriers.

More importantly, we applaud you!

Many of you helped build the public pressure needed to make this shift happen. Earlier this year, you heeded our call-to-action and contacted your elected officials to urge them to support full Medicaid Expansion. Others supported me when I testified at a state hearing. And, many of you submitted comments alongside our comments to the federal Department of Health and Human Services urging them to deny Governor Corbett’s Healthy Pennsylvania plan.

Thank you for your time, your effort, and your commitment to helping secure health care for all Pennsylvanians.

Let’s celebrate this historic moment. Let it remind us in the days, months, and years to come that when we work together, we can dismantle barriers to the fundamental services so many of us need.

Thanks,
Benjamin D. Geffen
Staff Attorney