Pennsylvania: ACA Medicaid expansion saves PA $626M

Last year, GOP Governor Tom Corbett pushed through a poorly-conceived, overly-cumbersome "Republican alternative" Medicaid expansion program called Healthy PA, which didn't go into effect until late in the year. He was defeated by Democrat Tom Wolf, who vowed to scrap the "alternative" version and simply expand Medicaid to residents below 138% of the Federal Poverty Level, as the ACA had intended.

This transition was messy, but has now been completed...and is saving the people of Pennsylvania a boatload of money:

Department of Human Services Sec. Ted Dallas Tuesday announced the end of the transition from Healthy PA to traditional Medicaid expansion—known as HealthChoices in Pennsylvania—as the last of the expansion insurance plans took effect.

According to Sec. Dallas, 440,000 Pennsylvanians are enrolled in Medicaid expansion insurance plans with the last group of enrollees coming out of Healthy PA’s primary coverage options into Medicaid expansion.

“With that last group of folks moving over, the Medicaid expansion is now complete,” Sec. Dallas told reporters.

He added with the full transition now complete, Pennsylvania is eligible for more federal funding and will realize a savings of $626 million from people moving off of state-funded care to fully federally funded Medicaid expansion.

Normally I'd be more geeked about the 440,000 enrollee update, but this is almost identical to my last PA Medicaid update (which listed it as 439,000 at the time), so the financial savings are the bigger story today.