More of this for more people.
Iowa has
received a waiver from the federal government to implement a program and accept the Medicaid expansion available under Obamacare. Like the plan approved for Arkansas, low-income Iowans who don't qualify for traditional Medicaid would have their purchase of health insurance on the exchange covered by the expansion money. The government didn't approve the entirety of Iowa's plan, however.
The waiver approval also allows Iowa to move ahead on an initiative aimed at encouraging healthier behaviors, and it would let the state charge a fee to people who make more than 100 percent of the poverty line.
The Iowa proposal had asked for approval to charge about a 3 percent premium on people who made more than 50 percent of the federal poverty line.
That fee, which would have amounted to about 3 percent of income, would be waived if participants engaged in certain healthy behaviors.
The administration’s decision gave approval for a fee to be charged only on those above the poverty line.
That means that at least 150,000 more people who have been locked out of the system are going to be getting health care coverage now. That's 150,000 more people to be thankful for Obamacare. While the precedent of Medicaid privatization now seems firmly established, it does mean that potentially hundreds of thousands more people in states that have so far refused the expansion could be brought into the system.