Medicaid

Section 1115 Medicaid waivers can allow states to test new approaches in Medicaid that differ from what is required by federal law. This page tracks approved and pending waiver provisions (including expansions and restrictions) related to eligibility, benefits, and social determinants of health and other delivery system reforms.

This brief describes key challenges that Medicaid work requirements may pose for adults with mental health or substance use disorders. In May, the House passed a budget reconciliation bill that includes national Medicaid work requirements for adults in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) expansion group.

This policy watch discusses the data privacy protections in Medicaid and the implications of breaches or violations of those protections.   

Prior KFF analysis allocated CBO’s federal Medicaid spending reductions and enrollment losses across the states, and this policy watch builds on that analysis to examine the potential impacts in expansion states compared with non-expansion states.

On May 22, the House passed a budget reconciliation bill that includes significant changes to the Medicaid program. On June 16, the Senate Finance committee released proposed reconciliation language with some substantive changes to the Medicaid work requirement provisions, but this language may change as the Senate debates the bill. This issue brief provides an overview of the Medicaid work requirement provisions.

If Congress passes the reconciliation bill with the Finance Committee provision, 22 states might have to reduce their provider taxes on either hospitals or managed care organizations, cutting a key source of state Medicaid funding in those states. This policy watch explains how the Finance Committee provision would reduce states’ Medicaid spending, and the implications for expansion states.

On May 22, the House passed a budget reconciliation bill that includes significant changes to the Medicaid program. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the bill would reduce federal Medicaid spending by $793 billion and reduce the number of people covered by Medicaid in 2034 by 10.3 million. Many of the reductions in coverage will be among the 22 million Medicaid enrollees ages 50 and older.

This analysis details the number of people who would become uninsured from policy changes in the ACA Marketplaces and Medicaid. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that, taken together, these changes will result in 16 million more uninsured people in the year 2034 than would otherwise be the case.

In a new column, Dr. Drew Altman, KFF’s President and CEO, discusses the limits of polling on policy, and what we have learned over more than 30 years of polling about how giving people more information and arraying tradeoffs can change opinion, including on the health policy changes and funding cuts in the current reconciliation bill.

KFF is tracking the Medicaid provisions in the 2025 federal budget bill, including new Medicaid work and verification requirements and a reduction in the expansion match rate for states that use their own funds to cover undocumented immigrants.