Home Medicaid Topics

Medicaid

What to Watch

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.

Work Requirements

Challenges with Implementing Work Requirements

Many states are anticipating a variety of implementation challenges, including the need for complex system changes, a compressed implementation timeline, and limited staff capacity.

What is the Medicaid Hardship Exception?

The number of Medicaid expansion enrollees who ultimately qualify for the high unemployment hardship exception will depend on how the exception is implemented and how unemployment rates changes.

Tracking Implementation of the 2025 Reconciliation Law: Medicaid Work Requirements

KFF’s interactive tracks key data and policies that will affect how states implement Medicaid work requirements, which are required under the 2025 budget reconciliation law starting in January 2027. The tracker includes state-level data on Medicaid enrollment and renewal outcomes as well as current state enrollment and renewal policies.

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.

The Essentials

  • 5 Facts: Immigrants and Medicaid

    This brief provides five key facts on Medicaid and immigrants as context for understanding the potential impacts of policy changes under the Trump administration.

  • 5 Facts: Medicaid and Hospitals

    This brief explains the role of Medicaid for hospitals, including how much spending on hospital care comes from Medicaid, the share of births covered by the program, and how Medicaid expansion has impacted hospital finances.

  • Medicaid Financing: The Basics

    Medicaid is a major source of financing for states to provide health coverage and long-term services and supports for low-income residents. This brief examines key questions about Medicaid financing and how it works.

  • 5 Facts: Medicaid’s Share of National Health Spending

    This brief explores how Medicaid spending contributes to national health spending and how different service areas contribute to Medicaid costs.

  • 5 Facts: Medicaid and Nursing Facilities

    The substantial Medicaid savings in the reconciliation bill could have major implications for nearly 15,000 federally certified nursing facilities and the 1.2 million people living in them.

Latest News

More KFF Health News

Subscribe to KFF Emails

Choose which emails are best for you.
Sign up here

View the Latest: Medicaid

Filter

List Grid

1,231 - 1,240 of 2,680 Results

  • Dual Eligibles Tutorial

    Interactive

    This tutorial was produced for kaiserEDU.org, a Kaiser Family Foundation website that ceased production in September 2013. The kaiserEDU.org tutorials are no longer being updated but have been made available on kff.org due to demand by professors who are using the tutorials in class assignments. You may search for other tutorials to view on kff.org.

  • State Fiscal Conditions and Medicaid: 2014 Update

    Issue Brief

    This issue brief provides an overview of Medicaid financing, Medicaid’s role in state budgets, the relationship between Medicaid and the economy and how the ACA and the Medicaid expansion could affect state budgets.

  • Don’t Expect Medicaid Work Requirements to Make a Big Difference

    From Drew Altman

    Under the Trump Administration, some Republican governors may look to move their Medicaid programs in a more conservative direction. In his latest column for Axios, Drew Altman discusses the arguments about Medicaid “work requirements” and why few people are likely to be affected by them in practice.

  • Medicaid Family Planning Programs: Case Studies of Six States After ACA Implementation

    Report

    In light of the coverage trends and other ACA-related changes, this paper describes the impact on women and their partners, as well as family planning providers, of the impact of family planning expansion programs under Medicaid. It is based largely on interviews with state officials, providers and consumer advocates in Alabama, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Missouri and Virginia – a cross-section of states in terms of geography, Medicaid expansion status, and implementation of a Medicaid family planning program. State interviews were supplemented by interviews with national experts, policymakers and family planning provider organizations. This study was conducted in Summer 2016 before the Presidential election.

  • State Variation in Medicaid Per Enrollee Spending for Seniors and People with Disabilities

    Issue Brief

    This issue brief explains the variation in Medicaid spending per enrollee for seniors, nonelderly adults with disabilities, and children with disabilities compared to other populations as well as the variation in per enrollee spending for these populations among states. It also provides a snapshot of state choices about optional eligibility pathways and services important to many seniors and people with disabilities.

  • Proposed Medicaid Section 1115 Waivers in Maine and Wisconsin

    Issue Brief

    While the future of legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and make fundamental changes to the structure and funding of the Medicaid program is uncertain, states and the Administration may achieve major changes to Medicaid through the use of Section 1115 Medicaid waivers. Wisconsin submitted a waiver amendment request to CMS in June 2017 and Maine submitted a waiver application to CMS in August 2017. Unlike previous waivers that encompass the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, Wisconsin and Maine are seeking waiver authority to make significant changes to Medicaid that would affect non-expansion Medicaid populations.