Healthy Indiana Plan

The Indiana Family and Social Services Administration, FSSA, has temporarily suspended work requirements for people on the Healthy Indiana Plan, HIP. The move is in response to a federal lawsuit filed last month.

The lawsuit challenging HIP, Indiana’s Medicaid expansion plan, threatens more than the requirement to report work or volunteer hours. The suit also challenges lockout penalties and premium payments included in the program. 

Indiana suspended a Medicaid policy that locked participants out of coverage for failing to confirm their eligibility for health care with the state.

Hoosiers did not stop signing up for Indiana's Medicaid expansion even though they had to pay into a health savings account. That’s according to new research from three Indiana University professors.

With federal spending on Medicaid experiments soaring in recent years, a congressional watchdog said state and federal governments fail to adequately evaluate if the efforts improve care and save money.

Indiana’s Medicaid program got an update on Feb. 2 when the federal government approved a new version of the Healthy Indiana Plan.

The new changes became effective Feb. 1.

Indiana Medicaid will now cover residential treatment, detoxification and peer recovery services. The federal government approved the expanded coverage earlier this month as part of the Healthy Indiana Plan’s Medicaid waiver extension.

Note: This story was updated at 11 p.m. February 22, 2017. 

The federal government is welcoming public comment on an application to renew Indiana’s Medicaid program until March 17. The program needs federal approval to continue because its design is an experiment: Unlike Medicaid expansions in other states, the Healthy Indiana Plan, or HIP 2.0, requires members to make monthly payments. Now Indiana has to argue that the experiment is working.