Medicaid is one of the most crucial pieces of the U.S. health care system and provides critical health care coverage to low-income, disabled, and elderly Americans as well as to low-income children. It pays for nearly half of all births in the nation, and is the largest payer of long-term services and supports such as nursing home care and home and community-based services. Medicaid is also the largest single payer for behavioral health services, including mental health and substance use disorder treatment. Medicaid plays a major role in the treatment and prevention of chronic diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular disease; Medicaid recipients and uninsured individuals have a higher prevalence of chronic disease than the population at large.
These impacts have grown with Medicaid expansion. Since the Affordable Care Act expanded eligibility to childless adults with monthly income up to 138 percent of the Federal Poverty Level, 11 million more Americans now have access to comprehensive health care coverage. These individuals now have a means by which to treat and manage chronic conditions and comorbidities, to receive care that enables them to stay in their homes and communities, to seek treatment for debilitating mental health and substance use disorders amidst the raging opioid crisis, and to bring healthy babies into the world. Medicaid expansion has driven down hospitals’ uncompensated care costs, allowing them more resources to treat patients. (See ANA’s recent Health Policy piece on this subject). Medicaid expansion has also figured prominently in policy debates at both the national and state levels. Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike cited Medicaid expansion as reasons for their opposition to the ultimately failed American Health Care Act.
Medicaid expansion has moved the U.S. health care system toward achieving the American Nurses’ Association’s (ANA) core principles of health care reform: universal access to a standard package of essential health benefits for all citizens and residents; utilization of primary, community-based and preventative services while supporting the cost-effective use of innovative, technology-driven, acute, hospital-based services; the economical use of health care services with support for those who do not have the means to share in costs; and a sufficient supply of a skilled workforce dedicated to providing high quality health care services.
Despite a major legislative setback, discussions around health care reform and the future of the Medicaid program continue. ANA is committed to preserving the coverage gains made in recent years. ANA will continue to provide our members with all new developments on health care reform and the Medicaid program.