SEATTLE – In a bid to save money, the state is paying health care premiums for people who switch from Medicaid to their employer’s health plans.
About 1,300 people have made the switch since the state began the pilot program two years ago. Medicaid officials project that in another two years, 5,000 people could be enrolled in the program, saving the system $3 million a year.
The project is part of a fledgling effort by businesses, labor and government to get more people on health insurance while curbing costs.
“There is no reason not to participate for the client,” said Thuy Hua-Ly, a state Department of Social and Health Services deputy director who helps oversee the project.
Family health coverage averages $11,484 a year nationally, according to a survey released in September by Kaiser Family Foundation and Health Research and Education Trust.
Workers more often are required to pay higher premiums and deductibles or take more responsibility for their health. Many drop health coverage altogether.
Several states, including Washington, have unsuccessfully attempted to force large companies such as Wal-Mart to spend more on health benefits.
A program to pay Medicaid families to use their employers’ plans “is a good way to stretch limited public dollars and also make it more likely for people to get coverage,” said Rick Curtis, president of Institute for Health Policy Solutions in Washington, D.C.
Roberta Reynolds is a single mother with four of six children still at home in Aberdeen. She now has health care coverage for herself and her four boys under the pilot program.
With an annual income of $39,000, she previously was eligible to have only the boys covered by Medicaid. She had to pay an additional couple hundred dollars for her own health insurance.
“It’s a lot of money for a single parent,” she says. “If you spend it wisely, you can make it go where it needs to go.”
Medicaid saves $88 million annually in Pennsylvania, which has the nation’s largest such subsidy program with 23,500 people.
Washington state is subsidizing 520 Medicaid families of people employed at more than 200 companies, including Nordstrom, Costco, Amazon.com and Alaska Airlines.
A person on Medicaid costs Washington about $173 a month, compared to $76 under an employer’s plan, plus another $16 a month for services not covered, such as vision and dental.
Fewer than 30 percent of families contacted by Medicaid have agreed to switch.
They may be hindered because many workers must coordinate with their companies’ narrow open-enrollment periods for starting or changing benefits, said Hua-Ly.
He said a solution may be requiring participation by qualifying families, as Pennsylvania does, along with allowing plans to waive the open-enrollment periods for Medicaid clients.
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