Medicaid for the Middle Class?

According to a recent Associated Press article, a technical glitch in the new federal healthcare reform law will allow up to 3 million middle-class people to qualify for Medicaid in 2014. This change would affect early retirees. Actuaries for the federal Health and Human Services department state that a married couple could have an annual income of about $64,000 and still receive Medicaid. This is because, unlike today, most of their Social Security benefits would no longer be counted as income when determining program eligibility. The Medicaid-eligible early retirees would be in addition to the estimated 16 to 20 million new enrollees the law added by expanding Medicaid to cover low-income childless adults. The Obama administration is currently looking into ways to address the problem.