Last week, Congressman André Carson and Congressman Baron Hill penned a letter to Governor Mitch Daniels, urging him to reconsider his knee-jerk reaction to the passage of landmark health care reform. As it turns out, what Governor Daniels said in the immediate aftermath of the bill’s passage was, to put it mildly, a little off-base:
The Healthy Indiana Plan does not have to be terminated because of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, according to the director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS.In March, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels ordered the state’s medical savings accounts for low-income adults through the Healthy Indiana Plan, or HIP, to be phased out. He also closed HIP for new enrollees.
Daniels said Hoosiers enrolled in the state plan would be picked up by Medicaid through the new federal health care overhaul.
“I see no reason to add people to the rolls of a program whose days are numbered,” Daniels told The Associated Press.
But in a memo addressed to U.S. Rep. Baron Hill, D-Ind., CMS Director Cynthia Mann stated, “Indiana is in no way required to terminate its Healthy Indiana Plan,” which is approved through Dec. 31, 2012.
Hoosiers owe both of these great Democratic leaders our thanks for sticking up for our state.
