Advocates claim success for Medicaid outreach
10,000 city residents added to rolls under new state rules

By Joe Burris | joseph.burris@baltsun.com

October 27, 2009

Health care advocates said Monday that they had met their goal of adding 10,000 Baltimore residents to Medicaid rolls since the state expanded coverage and lowered eligibility requirements last year.

Vincent DeMarco, president of the Maryland Citizens' Health Initiative, said that statewide, 50,000 adults have benefited from the new state health care expansion since it took effect in July of last year, and that 50,000 more children who were eligible for insurance but not yet covered have been enrolled since 2007 because of the O'Malley administration's outreach program and efforts by health care advocates. The state initially projected that the Medicaid rolls would increase by about 25,000 residents when coverage was expanded.

In July 2008, Maryland extended Medicaid eligibility to adults who have children and whose household income is 116 percent of poverty, or $20,500 for two parents with one child. Previously, the cutoff for parents was 40 percent of the poverty level, so the same family would have had to make less than $7,000 per year to be eligible.

Melanie Townsend Diggs, who spoke at a news conference Monday, enrolled in July of last year, nine months before the birth of her daughter, Eden. The coverage enabled her to get the health care she needed during the pregnancy.

DeMarco said the program expansion has improved the state's coverage of adults. "Last year Maryland went from 44th in the country to 21st in health care coverage for adults," he said.

The recent expansion is a byproduct of Gov. Martin O'Malley's Working Families and Small Business Health Care Coverage Act of 2007. It was funded in part by the state's $1-a-pack cigarette tax increase.

Analysts originally estimated that the expansion would cost $94.6 million in federal and state money yearly, but the amount was subsequently raised to $144.6 million. Tricia Roddy, director of Medicaid planning for the state health department, said officials are analyzing whether the estimate will go higher. Funding the expansion, she said, came from a number of sources.

DeMarco said his group is proposing an additional 75-cent increase in the cigarette tax and a 10-cents-per-drink increase in the alcohol tax to fund more of the program. He said that the next step is to ensure that the coverage is expanded to childless adults.

But state Sen. David R. Brinkley, a Frederick County Republican, said that if cigarettes and alcohol are taxed too much, "people go somewhere else to buy it. Case in point: Virginia and West Virginia. We are losing revenue in that regard."

John G. Folkemer, a deputy secretary for the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said that the small-business component of the act began last October, and since then more than 200 small businesses have signed up to participate with more than 1,000 employees enrolled with their families.

Mayor Sheila Dixon said she made it a point to inform residents throughout the city that health care coverage is available.

"Being healthy makes a huge difference in so many aspects of people's lives," Dixon said.

www.baltimoresun.com/health/health-care/bal-md.hs.medicaid27oct27,0,1765097.story

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