A Pennsylvania health insurance program that covers 42,000 moderately low-income state residents has run out of funding, according to Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett.
Corbett, a Republican who has succeeded Ed Rendell, a Democrat, as the leader of the Keystone State, believes the state's adultBasic health insurance program is "essentially bankrupt," officials say.
The program has been selling subsidized coverage to state residents who would have 
a hard time paying for private health coverage but earn too much to qualify for Medicaid.
Pennsylvania has been holding premiums for the program to $36 per month by using tobacco-settlement revenues and donations from the states four Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans.
The tobacco money is gone, and the funding agreement with the Blues ended in December 2010, officials say.
The Blues agreed to contribute an extra $51 million to keep the program going until June, officials say.
Members of the Corbett transition team have decided that the program finances are too weak to keep the program going that long, officials say.
In place of that approach, "transition team members negotiated an agreement with the Blue Cross companies to waive their normal restriction on people with pre-existing conditions who move from adultBasic to the Blues' current Special Care plans for low-income people," officials say.
The adultBasic program is now set to die Feb. 28, officials say.
The Obama administration could help keep the adultBasic program alive by reallocateing funds from states not using high-risk pool money to Pennsylvania, according to Michael Consedine, the Pennsylvania insurance commissioner nominee.
Another option would be for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to let adultBasic enrollees shift automatically into the Pennsylvania federal Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP) program, Consedine says.
Many adultBasic enrollees have pre-existing conditions, Consedine says.
The Pennsylvania Health Access Network (PHAN), Harrisburg, Pa., has argued that Pennsylvania could keep the adultBasic program open by getting the Blues to contribute about 3% of their
$5.9 billion in combined surplus to the program.
The Blues' "Special Care" program costs about 4 times as much as the adultBasic program, covers only catastrophic hospital care, and provides coverage for just 4 doctor visits per year, PHAN says.
PHAN Project Director Antoinette Kraus says in a statement that she is happy to see the Corbett administration considering the possibility of using federal aid to keep the adultBasic program alive.
Using PCIP funding to help current adultBasic will probably not be an option, however, because the Affordable Care Act, the legislative package that created the PCIP system, requires PCIP enrollees to be uninsured for at least 6 months, Kraus says.
"It is highly unlikely that Congress will change this in the near future," Kraus says. "AdultBasic enrollees should not be forced to go uninsured for six months."
Pennsylvania PCIP enrollment will be capped at 3,5000, and only 1,200 slots are available, Kraus says.
Anonymous visitors who say they are adultBasic enrollees have posted comments on the PHAN website expressing fear about what will happen if they lose access to the adultBasic program.
"I am diabetic and under adultBasic I have received my diabetic supplies free," one commenter has written. "I also have two blockages in my heart from previous open heart surgery and see a cardiologist…. I am not sure what I am going to do if adultBasic goes away. This looks like a death sentence."
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