Gov. Daniels asks for help from Sen. Bahy and Sen. Lugar on healthcare reform bill

   With all of the national debate of the US Senate's proposed Healthcare plan, another voice is added to the opposition. Indiana Governor, Mitch Daniels, has voiced his displeasure with part of the bill. Part of the bill increases the availability of Medicaid to those of lower income that need healthcare insurance.
   In letters to Indiana Senators Evan Bayh and Richard Lugar, Gov. Daniels has said, the new bill will increase Indiana's spending for the program at an estimate of 2.3 billion over the next 10 years. The estimate was given by Milliman, an Indianapolis actuarial firm. Gov. Daniels had privatized the Medicaid program, as well as the rest of the programs operated through Family Social Services.
   Recently, the privatization has come under scrutiny after an IBM sub company fell short of its abilities to run the programs. The problem had gotten bad enough that the federal government became a watchdog. Gov. Daniels implemented changes that he hopes will correct the problems and terminated the contract with one of the companies of the privatization.
   The analysis estimated that '392,000 additional adults and 103,000 more children would be eligible for the program and that 50,000 people on the Healthy Indiana Plan would move to Medicaid. At a press conference on these findings, Gov. Daniels said, “ All the difficulties that we are facing to keep the state in the black will become dramatically harder if that bill passes in anything like the form that it is in now. I already saw it as a terribly flawed piece of legislation and also very dangerous to the taxpayers of our state, but our analysis says it is much, much worse than that.”
   In response to Gov. Daniels letter, Sen. Bayh said, “As the Senate health care debate continues, it is important that we mitigate the costs to Indiana taxpayers and guarantee that the federal share of the program is significantly higher than it is now. Under the current Senate proposal, beginning in 2014 the federal government will be paying 100 percent of increased Medicaid costs through 2016 and 95 percent of the costs thereafter. The current federal share is 70.2 percent, so these increases represent a significant improvement in the portion borne by the federal government. The alternative is to have individual Hoosiers and Indiana businesses continue to indirectly pay the costs of treating the uninsured, something that is both costly and inefficient.”
   Sen. Lugar has said he opposes the bill due to its costs.