Medicaid is the nation's public health insurance program for low-income Americans, financing health and long term care services for more than 55 million individuals. The program provides access to affordable and comprehensive health care for children and adults in low-income working families and for the elderly and disabled who often rely on the program to fill in critical gaps in their Medicare coverage. Although three quarters of Medicaid's enrollees are adults or children, the elderly and disabled account for 70% of the program's expenditures. Financed and operated jointly by the states and federal government, Medicaid accounts for roughly one sixth of the nation’s health care spending and almost half of all spending on long term care. As the largest source of federal support to the states, Medicaid is also a major engine in state economies, supporting millions of jobs across the country. Its guarantee of open-ended federal financing that matches state spending enables states to respond to losses of private health insurance attributable to unemployment and rising health insurance premiums, increases in health care costs, emergencies and disasters, and an aging society.
The State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) was enacted in 1997 to provide a capped amount of federal matching funds to states for coverage of children and some parents with incomes too high to qualify for Medicaid, but for whom private health insurance was either unavailable or unaffordable. Covering roughly four million children, SCHIP has played an important role in reducing the number of uninsured children in America.
This section provides data and information on the Medicaid and SCHIP programs with a focus on the populations they serve. Analyses of proposals to restructure these programs, data from surveys, studies of the impact of recent programmatic changes on beneficiaries, and basic information on how the programs operate and are administered can all be found here. These materials can help to inform discussions of reform proposals and efforts to improve and maintain health coverage and financing for the low-income disabled and elderly populations, families, and children who are left out of our country’s fragmented, employer-based health care system.
The Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured is the main source for the Foundation's work related to the Medicaid and SCHIP programs. Begun in 1991, the Commission is the largest operating program of Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and has brought increased analysis and attention to health coverage issues facing the low-income population for over a decade. Through its reports and briefings, the Commission continues to provide up-to-date information on Medicaid and SCHIP and assesses options for reform.
