An Oklahoma Senate committee advanced a plan Monday to extend insurance to people who would benefit from Medicaid expansion without actually expanding Medicaid.
Senate Bill 605 tells the Oklahoma Health Care Authority to set up a premium assistance program called the Oklahoma Plan for people earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. The state will not, however, be directly involved in more care or coverage.
"What we’re proposing to do here is to purchase health insurance plans for these people that would be eligible for Medicaid expansion if we had done that," said the bill's author, Sen. Greg McCortney.
McCortney said the goal is holding down the state’s costs.
"These are people who haven’t had access to health care for years, and once they get it, we find out they’re sick because, well, now they have insurance. So, this puts that pitfall on the private insurance company instead of on the state government," McCortney said.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 84,000 Oklahoma adults are currently uninsured because they make too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to be eligible for insurance marketplace subsidies.
The proposal also directs the health care authority to request a waiver from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services so Oklahoma can use the nine-to-one federal Medicaid funding match for the endeavor. McCortney said that would let Oklahoma tap into $1.2 billion in federal funding by putting up $141 million.
"I fully believe that we can find almost all if not all of this money without increasing appropriation at all," McCortney said.
McCortney is also trying to work in a stipulation that would allow Oklahoma an out if the federal government decreases its funding in the future. The title is off the bill for now, but McCortney proposed a requirement that the legislature vote in the affirmative to continue within nine months of a federal funding decrease.
SB605 also requires many potential recipients to work at least 20 hours a week.
