Medicare Explained

Medicaid keeps making the headlines and they don’t sound good: the program’s costs are shooting up, the state’s budgets are straining to keep up, and while no one was watching the taxpayer funded program has grown from covering 34 million of us back in 1999 to covering more than 47 million of us today.

Don’t Disregard the Benefits of Medicaid

Medicaid has become the largest source of disability care financing in the U.S. For those of us with disabilities and for the health providers who care for them, Medicaid has been an invaluable safety net. More often than not, Medicaid has played a critical role in the healthcare of the disabled by providing coverage along with greater access to care.

Medicaid has grown consistently despite the debates that spiral around its skyrocketing costs (as well as a pair of controversial efforts in Missouri and Tennessee to scale it back). And as its grown, the program has also become extremely complicated.

Clearing Up the Confusion Around Medicaid

There are Federal laws that provide at least half of the funds for the program’s administration, but they are attached to a detailed set of limitations and requirements where eligibility and financing are concerned. And there are a variety of State laws (the States pay for the remaining half) that control who will provide it. The two sets of legislation often collide in ways that can be difficult to follow.

Can I Benefit From Medicaid?

Just answering a simple questions such as "are you eligible?" or "what coverage will you be eligible for?" can be rather difficult to do. But there are a few things we can tell you that you’ll need to know:

• Each State determines the amount, type, scope and duration of Medicaid’s services.
• Each State is responsible for establishing its own Medicaid eligibility standards.
• Each State sets the rates and payments for services.
• Each State administers its own Medicaid program.
• Medicaid is getting more and more expensive. The fight to limit the costs of the program has become a major concern for law makers and as a result, the plan can seem to change weekly. It will be important to get details on your local plan from your State’s Medicaid Association.
• Medicaid is changing rapidly. The program is being rewritten, adapted, developed, reviewed, implemented, and amended by Congress, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, the States, and the courts in almost every state. The features these efforts have worked to provide everything from more effectively targeted medical services for the developmentally disabled to a discounted prescription drug plan for the nation’s seniors.

Medicaid Is There for You

Finally, it should be noted that the Medicaid program serves as a healthcare safety net for every one of us. It was created 1965 to assist States in their attempt to provide adequate medical care to those in need. But, this was long before disability care services came into focus publicly, and as a result it’s evolved into the more comprehensive program it is today.