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Governor Rendell Proposes Expanded Initiative to Help the Uninsured
Today, Governor Rendell outlined his 2009-2010 budget proposal. As he has in years past, the Governor is proposing an initiative to protect Pennsylvania families by expanding access to affordable health care coverage.
Last week, the Pennsylvania Department of Insurance released its updated insurance survey. The findings were staggering and sobering. More than 1 million Pennsylvanians are uninsured and 880,000 of them are adults between ages 19-64.
The economic stimulus plan recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives included initiatives to help individuals who have recently lost their jobs maintain their health insurance. However, nearly two-thirds of Pennsylvania’s uninsured are working and would not be covered by these programs; the initiative outlined by the governor today would assist them.
The Governor proposes expanding the state’s adultBasic program to cover 90,000 individuals, which more than doubles the current enrollment. In addition to increasing the number of people who would receive this health insurance, his proposal adds prescription drug and behavioral health coverage to adultBasic. The expansion would be funded by federal matching funds, allowing us to help more citizens and offer more complete health care coverage. |
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This expansion will make a modest dent in the adultBasic waiting list, which stands at 180,000 adults and is growing rapidly due to the difficult economic times. Now it is more important than ever to leverage all available resources to help as many people as we can. It is the very least we should do.
Of course, the administration is more than willing to continue working with the legislature to expand the number of people covered by health insurance. We also stand ready to work with them to identify and develop additional innovative approaches to ensure all citizens of the Commonwealth have access to affordable quality health coverage.
Sincerely,
Ann S. Torregrossa
Director, Governor’s Office of Health Care Reform
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© Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. All rights reserved. Photos courtesy of Commonwealth Media Services. |
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