Health Insurance Premium Payment Program (HIPP)

The Health Insurance Premium Payment Program (HIPP) is a medicaid program that allows a Medicaid recipient to receive free private health insurance payed for entirely by their state's Medicaid program.

This program allows Medicaid recipients to have better coverage through a private insurace, and have more physicians available to them.

Medicaid benefits from this program, because it is less expensive to Medicaid to pay for a private plan than to pay for the coverages out of their own budget. A Medicaid recipient must be deemed 'cost effective' by the HIPP program of their state.

In some states the HIPP program has be institutionalized by non profit organizations to assist Medicaid recipients with the difficult task of getting onto the HIPP program.