The Iowa Health and Wellness Plan (IHAWP) is Iowa’s version of the Medicaid expansion, allowed as part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The IHAWP began on January 1, 2014 and includes two separate programs: 1) the Wellness Plan, which is a more traditional Medicaid-like program, operated by the Iowa Medicaid Enterprise (IME), and 2) the Marketplace Choice Program, where individuals selected a Qualified Health Plan (QHP), from eligible private plans in the Health Insurance Marketplace.
The report, part of an evaluation of the IHAWP program being conducted by the University of Iowa Public Policy Center (UI PPC), presents information about the initial provider network available to IHAWP members, with a comparison made to the network of providers available to adults in the Medicaid State Plan, administered by the Iowa Department of Human Services.