Keep Hoosiers Covered: Stop SB 2 & Protect Medicaid
SB 2, proposed legislation at the Indiana General Assembly, threatens to take away healthcare coverage from hundreds of thousands of low-income Hoosiers by making extreme changes to Indiana's Medicaid programs, including massive cuts to the Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP). SB 2 would:
Limit HIP enrollment at 500,000, arbitrarily kicking more than 250,000 people off of their healthcare coverage.
Add burdensome new paperwork requirements for all Indiana Medicaid members, including children, the elderly, and people with disabilities. This will most likely lead to people who qualify for Medicaid losing coverage and then having to reenroll due to paperwork issues, a disruptive and expensive process referred to as “churn.”
Subject HIP members to new work reporting requirements, which will lead to additional coverage loss and drive up the administrative costs of the program, wasting public dollars.
Indiana’s Medicaid programs, including HIP, provide essential healthcare coverage for nearly 2 million Hoosiers. HIP enables 1 in 7 Hoosiers to get and afford the essential healthcare we all need to live, work, and take care of their families.
Indiana’s Medicaid programs are vital to both Hoosier health and our state's economy. SB 2 not only risks the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, it threatens to remove more than $3.5 billion from our state's economy by cutting HIP! This federal money, which covers 90% of HIP's cost, is overwhelmingly spent in local communities and pays for tens of thousands of healthcare jobs and services. Without this funding, more hospitals and healthcare providers will likely be forced to close.
The new administrative requirements proposed would not only lead hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers to lose their healthcare coverage, SB 2 will make all of Indiana’s Medicaid programs more expensive to run, wasting public dollars to create costly new bureaucracy and unnecessary barriers for members. Money that could be used to improve Hoosier health will instead go toward managing a complex system of repetitious eligibility checks and exemptions.
The Bottom Line:
SB 2 will cause a huge spike in the uninsured rate, destabilizing Indiana's healthcare system, driving up healthcare costs for all Hoosiers and threatening the health and lives of hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers.