The Healthy Indiana Plan, the state's health insurance program for low-income Hoosiers, has added all the applicants from its waiting list to the program for 2014. That list was dramatically shorter than in previous years
Last year, more than 50,000 Hoosiers were on the waiting list for the Healthy Indiana Plan. When the federal government approved the program's renewal for 2014, it changed the scope of the program, forcing the state to lower the income eligibility ceiling.
The state's Family and Social Services Administration contacted Hoosiers on the waiting list, inviting them to reapply if they thought they still met the new eligibility guidelines. Fewer than 5,000 reapplied and of those only about 3,400 are eligible to enroll.
FSSA says those who did not reapply may be eligible for health insurance premium support through the federal healthcare marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act.
Clearing the smaller waiting list will still leave 17,000 spots open in the Healthy Indiana Plan. But some estimates say that could still leave hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers without an affordable health insurance option.