Adult Basic health plan is now history in PA

[fencesitter]

http://www.pa2012.com/2011/03/adultbasic-healthcare-ends-for-thousands-of-low-income-participants/

adultBasic HealthCare ends for thousands of low-income participants…

Participants at the rally shared their stories about living with the adultBasic benefit. The program cost the state $163 million and ended up on the budget chopping block as the state faces a $4 billion deficit. Gov. Tom Corbett said last month that he has no plans to seek alternative funding for the program.

Under adultBasic, low-income adults not eligible for other government health benefits could receive basic health coverage for $36 per month. This year the annual income limit was $21,660. Since 2005, Blue Cross and Blue Shield subsidized the program, but they ended those payments at the end of this year.

Athena Ford an organizer for Pa. Health Access Network, which organized the rally, said that the rally was about giving a voice to the 42,000 people who lost their coverage at midnight. That figure does not include nearly half a million people on waiting the waiting list to enroll.

[old mark]

1. I was on the waiting list for almost 3 years. The cost to be on the list

and still be insured started at $240 per month, increasing several times to $640 per month, which is what I was paying till it expired on February 28th.

FWIW, the state had the money approved and set aside to provide this insurance, but it was never released to the company, so manyh of us remained on the waiting list much longer than the 18 months that was the original promise.

There is now a Blue Cross limited insurance coverage available for people who were in the AB program that coveres a limited number of doctor visits per year, hospitalization and nothing else. I have sent them a check, and they have casned it, but I have heared nothing else from them as yet...I am wondering if the state has canceled this program as well, leaving most of us uninsurable.

I had bypass surgery in 2003, and no insurance company will cover anyone who has had that under any new policy.

mark