Beyond Cash and Counseling: The Second Generation of Individual Budget-Based Community Long-Term Care Programs for the Elderly
States are increasingly interested in the individual budget model for older Medicaid beneficiaries as a mechanism to improve responsiveness of benefits to beneficiaries’ needs and preferences and to increase their ability to remain outside or leave nursing homes. Beginning in January 2007, a new provision in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA) allows states to offer an individual budget option for an expanded range of home- and community-based services in their Medicaid state plans…