On February 9, Governor Tom 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 more available to more people, many of whom would have been 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.