Monday, May 5, 2008

A Plan for Hoosiers

By Grace-Marie Turner

Categories: Indiana

Mitchell Roob and Seema Verma describe the success of the Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP) in a blog posting for Health Affairs.

HIP is the first Medicaid expansion in the nation to be modeled in the spirit of a high deductible health plan/health savings account, which promotes personal responsibility while providing subsidized health protection to those who can least afford it. The plan is a melting pot of philosophical approaches and compromises; a plan that has attracted liberals and conservatives; and a plan that has withstood the test of CMS scrutiny and Medicaid rules, write the authors. HIP brings recipients and the State together in a market-based partnership to use resources judiciously and to promote provider competition resulting in improved transparency, quality and value for all Hoosiers, they write.

Roob is secretary of the Indiana Family and Social Services Administrationand Verma is a consultant.