Demand for adultBasic overflows

Seven years after Pennsylvania launched a low-cost health insurance plan for working-age adults, demand for the program is overflowing.  According to a March 15 Associated Press story written by Marc Levy and published by the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, 25,000 names were added to the waiting list in February alone, bringing the total on the list to 205,000.

The low-cost insurance plan, known as adultBasic, currently serves only 43,000 individuals.  Attempts last year by the Pennsylvania House to expand the program to 270,000 over a period of 3-4 years were blocked by the Pennsylvania Senate, which offered instead a plan to fund health clinics, hospital medical records, hospital efforts to reduce hospital-acquired infections, physician education, a network of volunteer doctors, and a high-risk insurance pool. 

Jessica Portalatin, a Lancaster school bus driver and mother of two, has no health coverage.  She worries about her daily sinus pain and whether it will cause her to miss work.  "I'm my children's only caregiver.  What's going to happen to them should I become really sick?"

Senator Ted Erickson, a Republican leader on health care issues in the Pennsylvania Senate, spoke March 9 at PHAN's "Getting Everyone Covered" conference in Harrisburg and expressed support for an excise tax on smokeless tobacco and cigars in order to expand the adultBasic program.  The Democratic Majority Leader in the Pennsylvania House, Todd Eachus, has indicated that later this spring, he will introduce a bill to expand adultBasic.