Tuesday marked the beginning of full implementation of the latest version of Pennsylvania's Medicaid expansion.
"It represents a lot of hard work across the department and among other agencies as well," said Department of Human Services secretary Ted Dallas.
The federal Affordable Care Act authorized expansion of Medicaid eligibility to everyone below 138 percent of the federal poverty guidelines, with the federal government funding 100 percent of coverage for all newly eligible adults from 2014 through 2016, then phasing down to 90 percent by 2020.
Former Gov. Tom Corbett opted in with Healthy Pennsylvania - his version of Medicaid expansion - starting Jan. 1 of this year. Gov. Tom Wolf, not a fan of that version, launched the transition to his version - HealthChoices - on April 27.
"Generally we've seen an uptick in enrollment since we switched to HealthChoices," Dallas said.
Eventually, he said, the department expects to have about 605,000 people in HealthChoices. Currently the number stands at about 440,000, he said - "almost exactly where we thought we would be."
At SouthEast Lancaster Health Services Inc., which helps people enroll in Medicaid, spokeswoman Nicole Specht Witman said things are going well under HealthChoices.
"The process for the Medicaid application is much more streamlined than when it was Healthy Pennsylvania," she said. "Folks are delighted and, at times, surprised to receive health insurance through Medicaid."
As for how the system is handling demand from people who were not previously insured, Dallas said its networks have generally been able to handle it.
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