Apple Health in Washington State always was Medicaid.
The recent change, besides the Expansion of Medicaid, is that Apple Health is now administered by Washington Healthplanfinder, not DSHS.
Apple Health was created for the Obamacare exchange. If you go to the WAState.gove web site for HCA, they explain how they are wrapping the children’ s Medicaid program into the Obamacare exchange and adding the adult Medicaid to Apple Care as well. If you recall, WA State made a lot of the moves toward Obamacare before the deadline, so that even if the ACA law was declared unconstitutional, WA State would still have moved a considerable way toward the same type of program.
There was a major problem last December when WA State realized that most of the traditional Medcaid recipients did not know that they had to renew their Medicaid by signing up on the Obamacare exchange.