Medicaid — the program that provides funding for adults, seniors (along with Medicare), children and people who are blind or disabled who can’t pay for their own health care — is expensive. It is painfully expensive. The program, along with CHIP (the Children’s Health Insurance Program), marketplace subsidies and Medicare is responsible for 25 percent of the federal budget. Total Medicaid costs in 2016 were around $532 billion, per the Kaiser Family Foundation. States fund up to half of the cost of Medicaid, and in my state, Idaho, our share of Medicaid and related payments makes up about 21 percent of the state budget.
Medicaid is a safety net that allows people who can’t afford private insurance or to pay out of pocket to get health care. It pays for doctors’ fees, preventive care services, hospital care, mental health care, the majority of women’s costs for pregnancy and childbirth and costs for the impoverished elderly who are in nursing homes. It pays for emergency room visits. It pays the costs of care for people who are uninsured and become sick and their health care debt makes them so poor that they are then eligible for Medicaid. With small exceptions, all medical bills for those insured under the program are paid by Medicaid, with none of those nasty co-pays left over. It often pays less than other insurance companies for the same services so some providers will refuse to accept Medicaid insurance, but the full spectrum of care is available to patients including such things as organ transplants. Medicaid has different names in different states: Oregon Health Plan in Oregon, Badgercare in Wisconsin, MediCal in California for instance. It has been expanded in 32 states under the Affordable Care Act to cover people making up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line.
Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how.
