Might Your Workers Be Eligible For Medicaid? Start-Up Helps Employers Find Out

Kaiser Health News ^ | January 7, 2015 | By Phil Galewitz

[Oldeconomybuyer]

The Gold ‘N Silver Inn in Reno, Nev., has long offered health coverage to its employees — but many of the cooks, dishwashers and waiters who make close to minimum wage can’t afford the $100 monthly premium.

Last January, when Nevada became one of more than two dozen states to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, 10 of the diner’s 55 employees qualified for the government insurance program for low-income Americans. None of them realized it, however, until the family-run restaurant hired BeneStream, a New York-based start-up funded partly by the Ford Foundation.

BeneStream charges $40 to screen each employee for Medicaid and then $20 a month for each individual it helps get into the program.

While the idea of enrolling privately employed workers in government programs is not without controversy, it is legal, say experts.

“You are just helping people to get something they are entitled to,” said Timothy Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University and expert on the Affordable Care Act.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

[mylife]

Probably not in any state that did not expand medicaid or allow the Feds to set up an exchange.

[Graybeard58]

“You are just helping people to get something they are entitled to,”
.............................................................

There’s that word again.

[Opinionated Blowhard]

Great News. The economy is so shi__y and we pay our workers so little that they are eligible for Medicaid. If things keep going the way they are, we will lay them off and they will be eligible for Food Stamps and Welfare too!

[Organic Panic]

Good excuse for the cheap skate boss to pay low and not give raises. And what employee is going to even ask for a raise when a raise will cost them their welfare handouts? Obamanomics!