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This issue brief answers key questions about Medicaid retroactive coverage, describes Iowa’s recent Section 1115 waiver amendment, considers the policy implications of retroactive coverage waivers, and identifies issues to watch.
This infographic highlights Medicaid’s role for seniors. It includes information about the senior population and highlights Medicaid’s role in increasing access to and financing treatment, particularly for long-term care. It also discusses the potential impact of proposals to limit federal Medicaid financing.
In a Health Affairs blog post, Joshua M. Wiener and Melissa Romaire of RTI International and MaryBeth Musumeci of the Kaiser Family Foundation examine whether states could successfully cope with substantial reductions in federal Medicaid funding under a per capita cap or block grant system by improving efficiency in the way both acute and long-term care are delivered and paid for under the program. A review of the evidence in literature suggests that large Medicaid…
This issue brief provides data on immigrants’ role in the U.S. health care workforce, including within key industries such as direct long-term care and the hospital workforce.
To financially qualify for Medicaid long-term services and supports (LTSS), an individual must have a low income and limited assets. In response to concerns that these rules could leave a spouse without adequate means of support when a married individual needs LTSS, Congress created the spousal impoverishment rules in 1988. Originally, these rules required states to protect a portion of a married couple’s income and assets to provide for the “community spouse’s” living expenses when…
This issue brief presents the latest data and answers key questions about HCBS waiver waiting lists from KFF's annual survey of state Medicaid home- and community-based services programs, including tables with state-level data.
Developing home and community-based service (HCBS) alternatives to institutional care has been a priority for many state Medicaid programs over the last two decades and the focus of Medicaid policy debates recently. While the majority of Medicaid long-term care dollars go toward institutional care, the national percentage of Medicaid spending on HCBS has more than doubled from 1992 to 2003. This report presents a summary of the main trends to emerge from the data for…
The Kaiser Family Foundation maintains a number of primers providing overviews of key health care programs and issues. Written by Foundation staff, each primer provides key data and information that helps illustrate the topic and its relevance for the nation's health care system. Medicaid: A Primer Medicare: A Primer The Uninsured: A Primer Health Care Costs: A Primer How Private Health Coverage Works: A Primer Mental Health Financing in the United States: A Primer The…
This brief examines Medicaid's medically needy program, which gives states the option to extend Medicaid eligibility to those with high medical expenses whose income exceeds the maximum threshold, but who would otherwise qualify. It provides updated enrollment and spending figures on the medically needy using data through federal fiscal year 2009, and explains how individuals become eligible for the program and key considerations for policy discussions. Brief (.pdf)
Medicare is a critical source of health insurance coverage for virtually all older women in the U.S. and for many younger women who have permanent disabilities. Because women have longer life expectancies than men, more than half (57%) of the people covered by the program are women. In 1999, there were 21 million women on Medicare 19 million ages 65 and over and another 2 million women under age 65 with disabilities who received Social…
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