Medicaid is a federal and state program providing health services to individuals with low income, elderly adults, children, pregnant women, and disabled people. The program covered with health care 74.2 million people by February 2021 (Medicaid, 2021). Originally Medicaid was a part of the Social Security Amendments in 1965 and did not have much significance (Smith & Moore, 2017). Nowadays a program provides health insurance to millions of people in the United States and partly covers the costs of people with low income. Medicaid has developed a variety of beneficiaries and programs within the time that offer decent medical help to certain contingents of the population.
Currently, Medicaid provides a bigger amount of health care comparing to the beginning of its work. Firstly, the federal government covered the expenses of patients who were matching specific eligibility requirements. Nowadays, Medicaid has a variety of programs and services allowing individuals from various categories to get access to medical care. For instance, such programs are the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), autism services, and home services (Medicaid, 2021). Throughout the last 17 years, the survey data shows how Medicaid has improved from a program with limited suitability and burdensome registration rules to an efficient and up-to-date program that, along with CHIP, covers a broad variety of health care for a population with low income (Brooks et al., 2020). Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2019, many states took several steps forward in expanding the program as ACA enhanced federal payments to states for accessing a bigger part of the population (Brooks et al., 2020). Now, people with earnings till 138% of the FPL can use health care offered by Medicaid (Medicaid, 2021). Since 1965, the program developed programs that have more sustainable abilities and expanded coverage of the population.
Health information technologies help Medicaid enhance its working process, track data information and avoid human errors. Medicaid uses electronic visit verification (EVV) that gives certain information on when a medical worker arrives during all in-home visits of patients (Medicaid, 2021). Implementing the Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Program, Medicaid made a step forward to avoid mistakes depending on a human factor, help the system work more efficiently, and provide patients with information about their health. It also became easier to evaluate data and assess deviation by demographic details, patient’s visit types, and clinic characteristics (Marino et al., 2018). This data is useful for statistical calculations, better future planning and expanding the program.
However, the Medicaid budget depends on Administration, and federal funds sometimes provide various payments which also decreases the opportunities of Medicaid. If less money is being spent on every individual, health care can be provided in limited conditions. Moreover, ACA is not obligatory to follow, and still, 14 states refrain from expanding the Medicaid program (Brooks et al., 2020). Volunteer circumstances slow down the progress and the speed of changes. In addition, after expanding the coverage, Medicaid takes long periods to make an appointment for people with non-emergency occasions (Brooks et al., 2020). These shortcomings on the way for Medicaid’s development should be considered by the government to create a better system that works efficiently.
Thus, Medicaid has developed as a program from an incomplete system providing medical help to a limited contingent of people to a modern program widening the possibilities and simplifying the rules for getting access to it. There are still some shortcomings to work on such as depending on the federal budget payments, longer periods for making an appointment. However, the steps taking to enhance the system have shown a fast improvement and decent results.
References
Brooks, T., Roygardner, L., Artiga, S., Pham, O., & Dolan, R. (2020). Medicaid and CHIP eligibility, enrollment, and cost-sharing policies as of 2019: Findings from a 50-state survey. The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. (2021). February 2021 Medicaid & CHIP enrollment.
Marino, M., Angier, H., Valenzuela, S., Hoopes, M., Killerby, M., Blackburn, B., Huguet, N., Heintzman, J., Hatch, B., O’Malley, J. P., & DeVoe, J. E. (2018). Medicaid coverage accuracy in electronic health records. Preventive medicine reports, 11, 297-304.
Smith, D. G., & Moore, J. D. (2017). Medicaid politics and policy (2nd ed.). Routledge.