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5 Facts: Medicaid Fraud, Waste, Abuse and Improper Payments

Program integrity efforts work to prevent and detect fraud, waste, and abuse; increase program transparency and accountability; and recover improper payments. This brief explains what we know about these issues and efforts to address program integrity.

Medicaid: What to Watch in 2026

Medicaid: What to Watch in 2026

In this brief, KFF explores how state fiscal pressures are likely to converge with the implementation of the 2025 reconciliation law to affect Medicaid coverage, financing, and access to care over the next year, especially leading up to the midterm elections.

Medicaid Watch

Featuring policy research, polling and news about how Medicaid is changing, and the impact of those changes due to the tax and spending cuts law

Medicaid and work

Tracking Medicaid Work Requirements:
Data and Policies

To implement Medicaid work requirements, states will need to make important policy and operational decisions, implement needed system upgrades or changes, develop new outreach and education strategies, and hire and train staff, all within a relatively short timeframe. The information tracked here can serve as a resource to understand Medicaid work requirements and state options, gauge readiness, and track implementation of the requirements.

understanding medicaid

Medicaid Financing

Medicaid represents $1 out of every $5 spent on health care in the U.S. and is the major source of financing for states to provide health coverage and long-term care. This brief examines key questions about Medicaid financing and how it works.

Medicaid and Provider Taxes

All states except Alaska cover some state Medicaid costs with taxes on health care providers. This brief uses data from KFF’s 2024-2025 survey of Medicaid directors to describe current practices and the federal rules governing them.

5 Facts: Medicaid and Hospitals

Absorbing reductions in Medicaid spending could be challenging for hospitals, particularly for those that are financially vulnerable. This brief provides data on the reach of Medicaid across hospitals, patients, and charity care.

Medicaid Home Care in 2025

This issue brief provides an overview of what Medicaid home care (also known as “home- and community-based services”) is, who is covered, and what services were available in 2025.

5 Facts: Medicaid Program Integrity

This brief explains what is known about improper payments and fraud and abuse in Medicaid and describes ongoing state and federal actions to address program integrity.

2025 Medicaid Home Care survey

Payment Rates Ahead of 2025 Reconciliation Law

This issue brief describes Medicaid payment rates for home care and other workforce supports that are in place in 2025, before the majority of the 2025 reconciliation law provisions start taking effect.

Home Care Support for Family Caregivers in 2025
number of responding states, including DC, that allow payments for family caregivers by type of home care program and type of caregiver.

This issue brief describes the availability of self-directed services and supports for family caregivers in Medicaid home care in 2025, before most provisions in the reconciliation law take effect.

States’ Management of Home Care Spending

This issue brief describes the mechanisms states are currently using to limit Medicaid spending on home care and their plans for adopting new mechanisms in state fiscal year (FY) 2026.

Waiting Lists for Medicaid Home Care, 2016 to 2025
A Look at Waiting Lists for Medicaid Home- and Community-Based Services from 2016 to 2025

This data note provides new information about waiting lists in Medicaid home care before many of the provisions in the 2025 reconciliation law go into effect.

Eligibility and coverage

  • Eligibility, Enrollment, and Renewal Policies

    KFF's survey findings capture state actions that seek to improve the accuracy and efficiency of Medicaid and CHIP enrollment and renewal processes, as of January 2025.

  • Seniors and People with Disabilities

    More than 1 in 3 people with disabilities (15 million) have Medicaid (35%). In comparison, only 19% of people without disabilities have Medicaid.

  • Children with Special Needs

    Amid debates about proposed cuts to federal Medicaid spending, this brief analyzes key characteristics of children with special health care needs and explores how Medicaid provides them with coverage.

  • People With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

    Among the estimated 8 million people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD), over three million have Medicaid coverage.

  • Adults with Chronic Conditions

    Among working age adults enrolled in Medicaid, approximately three quarters have one or more chronic conditions, and nearly one-third have three or more.

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  • The Impact of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP): What Does the Research Tell Us?

    Issue Brief

    The Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) was established in 1997 to provide coverage for uninsured children who are low-income but above the threshold for Medicaid eligibility. In 2009, and again in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Congress extended federal funding for CHIP, but funding will expire a little over a year from now. Decisions about CHIP’s future funding will be consequential as more than 8 million low-income children were covered by CHIP at some point during 2012. To help inform the policy debate about CHIP, this brief reviews key data and evidence from the large body of research on the impact of children’s coverage.

  • What’s Trending in Health Care? Conservative Ideas

    From Drew Altman

    In his latest column for The Wall Street Journal’s Think Tank, Drew Altman cuts through the political debate and reviews how some ideas conservatives like are taking hold in the American health system.

  • Medicaid Health Homes: A Profile of Newer Programs

    Issue Brief

    Under the ACA, states have a new Medicaid option to establish "health homes" designed to improve care coordination and integration and reduce costs for beneficiaries with chronic conditions. Thus far, 15 states have implemented health home programs. Following on a 2012 brief profiling Medicaid health home programs in the first six states to adopt the option, this brief describes the health home programs in the nine states that have implemented them since that time, and highlights common themes across them as well as distinctions among them.

  • A Closer Look at the Courts’ Impact on Health Policy

    From Drew Altman

    In his latest column for The Wall Street Journal’s Think Tank, Drew Altman maps what the combined impact of the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion and a plaintiff’s win in Halbig would look like and discusses the impact of court decisions on health policy.

  • The ACA Primary Care Increase: State Plans for SFY 2015

    Perspective

    This perspective provides additional information on state plans related to the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) primary care rate increase after the 100% federal financing ends December 31, 2014. The data in this report were collected as part of KCMU’s Annual Medicaid Budget Survey, conducted by Health Management Associates with the support of the National Association of Medicaid Directors,

  • The ACA’s Basic Health Program Option: Federal Requirements and State Trade-Offs

    Report

    The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) gives states the option to implement a Basic Health Program (BHP) that covers low-income residents through state-contracting plans outside the health insurance marketplace, rather than qualified health plans (QHPs). In March 2014, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued final regulations on the requirements for a BHP and the methodology for calculating federal payments to states. States can choose to implement BHP beginning in 2015. This report summarizes these federal policies, including the requirements for BHP as well as the methodology for determining federal BHP payments. It then analyzes the key trade-offs facing states as they decide whether and, if so, how to implement BHP, with a particular focus on the impact of BHP on state budgets and the size, stability, and risk level of state marketplaces.

  • Tapping Nurse Practitioners to Meet Rising Demand for Primary Care

    Issue Brief

    More than 58 million Americans, or nearly 1 in 5, live in primary care shortage areas, where the supply of primary care physicians is not sufficient to meet the needs of the population. Particularly as the demand for primary care increases due to population growth, aging, and expanded insurance coverage, strategies to mitigate already sharp strains on primary care capacity are needed. This brief focuses on the opportunity to more fully tap the potential of nurse practitioners to increase access to primary care.

  • Proposed Medicaid Expansion in Tennessee

    Fact Sheet

    This fact sheet describes Tennessee’s 1115 waiver demonstration project, Insure Tennessee, which expands the State’s Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act.