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.

The Essentials
  • 5 Facts: Medicaid and Provider Taxes

    This brief describe states’ current provider taxes and how the 2025 reconciliation law changed the federal rules governing them, including potential impacts across states.
  • 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: 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.
  • 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.
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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  • How Many Uninsured Adults Could Be Reached If All States Expanded Medicaid?

    Issue Brief

    As more people lose their jobs and accompanying ESI, more may fall into the coverage gap, particularly starting in 2021 after unemployment benefits expire for many who have lost their jobs and incomes are likely to drop below the minimum threshold for marketplace subsidies. This analysis estimates how many uninsured adults—including those uninsured even before the pandemic and those who could become uninsured as a result of it— could become eligible for Medicaid if states that have not yet expanded the program do so.

  • How Has the Pandemic Affected Health Coverage in the U.S.?

    Policy Watch

    Findings from administrative data suggest that the decline in enrollment among employer-sponsored insurance was far less than overall declines in employment as of September, and that many who did lose their job-based coverage likely found a safety net in coverage through Medicaid or the ACA marketplaces.

  • Health Insurer Financial Performance Through September 2020

    Issue Brief

    In this brief, we analyze third quarter data from 2018 to 2020 to examine how insurance markets performed financially through the end of September. Average margins remained relatively high compared to the same point in recent years, suggesting many insurers remained profitable even as non-COVID-related care returned in the summer and fall.

  • CMS’s 2020 Final Medicaid Managed Care Rule: A Summary of Major Changes

    Issue Brief

    On November 13, 2020, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) finalized revisions to the Medicaid managed care regulations which were proposed in November 2018. CMS previously finalized a major revision to these regulations in 2016. The November 2020 final rule is not a wholesale revision of the 2016 regulations but adopts changes in areas including network adequacy, beneficiary protections, quality oversight, and rates and payment.

  • A Reconfigured U.S. Supreme Court: Implications for Health Policy

    Issue Brief

    U.S. Supreme Court decisions shape health policy in important ways. The nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, if confirmed, is expected to establish a solid 6:3 conservative majority that could affect case outcomes in several areas. This issue brief considers the potential implications of a reconfigured Court for health policy issues, including those already on the Court’s docket for the coming term and those that the Court may choose to consider in this term or in the future.

  • President Bush’s Budget:  An Overview of Health Programs

    Other Post

    President Bush's Budget: An Overview of Health Programs A new Foundation presentation provides an overview of President Bush s federal budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2002, focusing on its impact on health programs.

  • Consumer Protection Issues in Medicare + Choice

    Report

    This report describes and analyzes key Medicare+Choice provisions in the Balanced Budget Act and the accompanying regulations related to consumer protections. It explains how the BBA makes significant improvements for beneficiaries in the areas of access, appeals, and quality.