His meeting schedule today might offer a clue of what he is pondering. On the agenda is a chat with Seema Verma, an architect of Indiana’s unusual healthcare program for the poor.
Indiana is among a handful of red states that took federal aid through the Affordable Care Act to expand Medicaid eligibility to poor, childless adults. But unlike most traditional Medicaid expansions, Indiana set up a system that requires many low-income residents on the program to pay small monthly contributions for their health coverage.
Conservatives, including the state's governor, Vice President-elect Mike Pence, have argued that this makes poor patients take greater responsibility for their health. And healthcare advocates in Indiana generally supported the program, in large part because it was seen as the only way to expand health protections in the deeply conservative state.
But cost-sharing requirements for low-income patients remains controversial, and a number of states that have experimented with it in the past stopped after concluding it was too expensive and difficult to administer.
