The Pennsylvania Health Funders Collaborative recently released a report by the Pennsylvania Economy League measuring the various financial impacts Medicaid expansion, as outlined under the Affordable Care Act, would have on Pennsylvania’s economy.
Like previous such reports by the Kaiser Family Foundation and by Rand Corporation (sponsored by the Hospital Association of Pennsylvania), the Economy League’s report projects that Medicaid expansion will result in health insurance coverage for hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians who otherwise would be uninsured. Additionally the report projects that the state would receive tens of billions of dollars in new federal revenue, create thousands of new jobs and bring in additional tax revenue.
The Economy League also conducted a detailed analysis of Pennsylvania’s existing health programs, which under Medicaid expansion would be funded by federal rather than state dollars, and found that expansion would save Pennsylvania tax payers $4.4 billion in state expenditures over the next ten years.
None of the studies released so far were undertaken before Arkansas first floated a proposal to allow the federal expansion funds to be diverted to a program that would supposedly make health insurance available to the affected population, mainly childless, non-pregnant adults under 67 years of age with incomes less than 138% of the Federal Poverty Level. None of these studies address how and of what cost this “Arkansas” plan would operate. We believe that the administration in Pennsylvania is actively exploring this Arkansas proposal in collaboration with the federal government. Click here to read a review of the Arkansas plan in a recent Associated Press article.
As part of our mission to ensure the region’s most vulnerable populations have access to fundamental resources, the Law Center supports increasing coverage for uninsured individuals in Pennsylvania under Medicaid expansion.
