Michigan Submits Waiver To Continue Medicaid Expansion
LANSING (WWJ/AP) - The future of Michigan's expanded Medicaid program is in the hands of the Obama administration.
Gov. Rick Snyder's administration this week submitted a waiver needed to ensure 600,000 low-income adults remain eligible for government-provided health insurance in 2016.
The state law establishing the Healthy Michigan program requires the waiver's OK by year's end or else the Medicaid expansion will end.
Under the waiver request, adults who have been enrolled for four years would have to buy private insurance through a government health exchange or pay higher copays and contribute more to health savings accounts. Like now, copays could be reduced if participants undergo an annual health risk assessment to flag obesity, alcohol use and smoking.
Snyder says the program "makes a real difference in people's lives."
After Healthy Michigan's launch in April 2014, the state took just eight months to surpass its original two-year enrollment projection of 477,000. The number of uninsured adults in Michigan dropped in half from 14 percent to 7 percent between 2012 and 2014, largely due to expanding Medicaid.
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