Indiana’s Medicaid Expansion — Designed by Pence and Verma — Panned in Federal Report

Indiana’s Medicaid expansion — with its “personal responsibility” provisions that require enrollees to pay monthly premiums and manage health savings accounts — proved no better at improving health and access to care than other state expansions, a federally commissioned study found.

Even when compared with states that did not expand Medicaid, Indiana showed only mixed results in improving the health of low-income residents, the report said.

Indiana’s expansion program — known as the Healthy Indiana Plan — has been closely watched not just because of its complexity, but also because its chief architects were former Vice President Mike Pence, who launched the effort as governor in 2015, and his top health consultant, Seema Verma, who directed the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services under President Donald Trump.

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