Illinois to target SNAP households for Medicaid expansion

This year, the Department of Healthcare and Family Services, or HFS, promised lawmakers that it had no plans to conduct outreach or marketing if the state decided to expand Medicaid eligibility under ObamaCare. Lawmakers explicitly asked whether the state would be conducting any kind of “marketing or other initiatives to recruit new enrollees.” Here’s how...

This year, the Department of Healthcare and Family Services, or HFS, promised lawmakers that it had no plans to conduct outreach or marketing if the state decided to expand Medicaid eligibility under ObamaCare. Lawmakers explicitly asked whether the state would be conducting any kind of “marketing or other initiatives to recruit new enrollees.” Here’s how HFS replied:

“The State has no plans to conduct outreach or marketing efforts. However, it is anticipated that other groups, including the federal government, likely will do so.”

A few months later, the state announced that it received a $115 million federal grant for ObamaCare outreach. Some of that money is going to community organizations and ObamaCare advocates, but the state is planning to spend between $30 million and $35 million on ObamaCare advertising.

Now, buried in the minutes of the Medicaid Advisory Committee’s most recent meeting, we learn that the state will be doing direct outreach not just for ObamaCare in general, but for the Medicaid expansion in particular. As the meeting’s minutes note:

“DHS is planning to do a special mailing to identify SNAP households that are highly likely to be eligible as the new adult group. There are about 100,000 single adult households and it should be easy to let them know they may be eligible. The mailing should go out before October to allow the person to fill out and return a simple form that essentially says yes I am interested in medical benefits.”

So, despite promising that the state “had no plans” to do any kind of outreach activity, it actually will be trawling the case files of those who receive food stamps in order to sign them up for another welfare program — in this case, Medicaid.

There’s no doubt that the state workers doing this outreach could be put to better use. Maybe they could even work on actually verifying eligibility of those who sign up for Medicaid, to make sure the people receiving benefits qualify. But that kind of work wouldn’t add more people to a failing government program.