Vermont Set to Increase Medicaid Eligibility with Federal Money (VPR)

July 11, 2012

By Bob Kinzel

The State of Vermont is set to receive several hundred million dollars in new Medicaid funds as part of the Affordable Care Act.

A key part of the Affordable Care Act calls on all states to expand their Medicaid eligibility standards to at least 133 percent of federal poverty levels. For a single person this would be roughly $14,500 and $30,000 for a family of four.

This provision will have little impact in Vermont because eligibility levels are already much higher. In most cases, a person is eligible for Medicaid with an income up to 300 percent of poverty levels.

But Vermont’s Medicaid program will benefit from the Affordable Care Act because the state’s congressional delegation worked to increase Vermont’s overall Medicaid funding rate.

Senator Bernie Sanders says it wasn’t fair to penalize the state for taking the lead on Medicaid eligibility.

“The issue here was that the goal of the health care reform was to expand Medicaid coverage especially in those states that were not providing much coverage,” said Sanders. ” And what we found is that Vermont in the initial writing of the bill was being discriminated against because we had fairly comprehensive coverage.”

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