Feds nix Healthy Ohio Medicaid premium plan

The federal government today rejected a Republican proposal to require working poor adults on Ohio’s expanded Medicaid rolls to pay more toward their health care (Source: “U.S. rejects Ohio proposal to require Medicaid premiums,” Toledo Blade, Sept. 9, 2016).

The Healthy Ohio Plan, initially proposed by Gov. John Kasich’s administration and later expanded by the General Assembly, would have charged Medicaid beneficiaries premiums as part of an effort to build self-sufficiency and wean able-bodied working adults off the program.

“We are concerned about the state’s request to charge premiums, regardless of income, to the 600,000 individuals in Ohio’s new adult group, as well as hundreds of thousands of low-income parents, foster-care youth, and beneficiaries with breast and cervical cancer,” wrote Andrew M. Slavitt, acting administrator at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in a letter to Ohio Medicaid Director John McCarthy.