Gov. Wolf will tout benefits of Medicaid expansion when he visits St. Luke’s Friday afternoon

Morning Call (Allentown, PA)

April 27--Gov. Tom Wolf will visit St. Luke's University Health Network's Allentown campus Friday afternoon to promote Medicaid expansion, crediting the policy for helping the network grow in the past few years.

St. Luke's added thousands of employees in the past year by acquiring Palmerton, Gnaden Huetten and Sacred Heart hospitals, as well as expanding its facilities. The network has plans to co-build a hospital in Schuylkill County with Geisinger, add a hospital to its Anderson campus in Bethlehem Township and build a hospital outside of Quakertown.

Wolf plans to discuss how the state's decision to expand Medicaid increased patient volumes and revenue for St. Luke's. The expansion added 700,000 residents to the program and helped reduce the state's uninsured rate to under 6 percent, according to the governor's office.

Health experts say government programs that provide public and private insurance such as the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid, enable people to better manage chronic illnesses, which cuts down on expensive treatments at emergency rooms.

However, hospitals across the state have complained that declining reimbursements from government payers such as Medicaid and Medicare have hurt them financially. Smaller hospitals like Sacred Heart, Palmerton and Gnaden Huetten have joined bigger networks to cope with financial pressures.

Medicaid, a health insurance program for poor families and the disabled, has become the country's largest insurance program, helping 1 in 5 people.

Under the Affordable Care Act, Pennsylvania, along with some other states, expanded Medicaid to cover people with household incomes up to 138 percent of the poverty line or $16,642 for one person.

Medicaid is one of the largest expenses in the state budget, amounting to $8.4 billion. The federal government provides a little more than half of the program's overall cost, and state taxpayers the rest.

Wolf, campaigning for re-election, has been pushing back against state Republican legislators' efforts to add a work requirement for those enrolled in Medicaid. Last year, he vetoed a work requirement bill, arguing that it would hurt a vulnerable population.

AP, Laura Olson and Steve Esack contributed to this story

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