Breaking down budgets: Why Medicaid expenses are growing

For Clark County’s Eva Bell, getting her family on Medicaid’s Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP) was both a relief and an additional stressor. So many of the state’s requirements and communications felt arbitrary and random to enrollees, she said.& Combined with the chance that the state could cancel coverage or enact another change, Bell said, “it was always a toss-up on whether — when we went to the doctor — whether we had Medicaid or not.” “You’re so thankful to have this service but at the same time you’re so incredibly fearful that at any moment, you’re going to find out that for some reason it’s just disappeared. And you’re just living in that,” Bell added.  For Medicaid’s 1.98 million Hoosier enrollees, the pandemic was a reprieve from the seemingly haphazard rules imposed by the Family and Social Services Administration that could put someone’s insurance status at risk. But, with those rules either expired or expiring, the state will be revisiting the entitlement program repeatedly identified as the “fastest-growing part” of Indiana’s biennial budget. The 150-member General Assembly will meet again in January to start drafting a new spending plan for the next two years, taking a close look at Medicaid...