Oregon Public Broadcasting

Officials in  Washington state will announce Monday morning how they plan to reduce the number of people on the Basic Health Plan by 40,000. Lawmakers ordered the cuts earlier this year to help close a $9 billion budget gap. Olympia correspondent Austin Jenkins reports.

Washington’s Basic Health Plan will slash its rolls through a combination of attrition -- that is people leaving the program on their own -- moving people to other healthcare programs like Medicaid; and removing people from the rolls who no longer qualify because they make too much money.

Even after that, between five and twenty thousand more people face the possibility of simply being cut-off from state-subsidized health insurance.

Dave Wasser with Washington’s Health Care Authority says it’s still a tough reality.

Dave Wasser: “There are going to be some people that are going to be impacted by this – there’s no doubt about it. And we’re not going into this with any kind of ‘whew we dodged a bullet.’ This is going to be a tough one.”

The question now is how will Washington decide who loses coverage? None of the options are pretty: tougher income eligibility requirements, removing people based on how long they’ve been on the program, higher monthly premiums or – the last option - a lottery system.