Healthy Indiana Plan extended for 10,000

In a reversal, Indiana will allow more than 10,000 low-income Hoosiers to remain on the state-sponsored health insurance plan for another four months.

The Indiana Family and Social Services Administration said today it is extending benefits to people it had previously said would lose their health coverage on Dec. 31 through the Healthy Indiana Plan.

The extension, through April 30, is intended to allow people more time to obtain new health coverage through the federal marketplace.

"Many HIP members have faced difficulties in the marketplace enrollment process, and this extension is meant to counter any lingering effects of the federal marketplace's well-documented technical issues," the FSSA said in a statement this morning.

Earlier this year, the FSSA sent two rounds of letters to 10,631 people telling them they would no longer qualify for the Healthy Indiana Plan, an affordable health insurance program for low-income adults, because they made too much to qualify under tighter guidelines.

Those people, who earned between 100 percent and 200 percent of the federal poverty guidelines, would have to turn to the federal marketplace for coverage. Only those people who make 100 percent or less of the federal poverty guidelines would be allowed to remain under the change.

The FSSA had said the move would open up about 10,000 slots on the Healthy Indiana Plan for people on the waiting list. Indiana serves roughly 35,000 Hoosiers through the program.

The means that a family of a four earning more than about $24,734 a year would have gotten kicked off the Healthy Indiana Plan at the end of this month.

This story will be updated.

Call Star reporter John Russell at (317) 444-6283. Follow him on Twitter: @johnrussell99.