Medicaid is a health coverage provider that delivers for millions of Americans,
including eligible low-income adults, children, pregnant women, and disabled
elderly. This is dispensed by the state within federal requirements, thus is
funded by both state and federal government. A benefit of Medicaid is that it is
known as the program for people with low income (Rudowitz et al., 2019).
According to Rudowitz et al, Medicaid covers 1 in 5 Americans. Most
Medicaid carriers lack entry to other reasonable health insurance (2019).
Medicaid covers a broad range of health services and limits out-of-pocket
costs, making it very beneficial for low-income families (Rudowitz et al,
2019). Another benefit of Medicaid is the variety of health and long-term care
services that it covers. According to Rudowitz et al, Medicaid cover services
such as prescription drugs, physical therapy, vision, and dental care (2019).
They also include precautionary services and enlarged mental health and
substance use management services. Another service covered is Early Periodic
Screening Diagnosis and Treatment for children (Rudowtiz et al, 2019). This
is beneficial because private insurances are often inadequate to meet their
needs (Rudowitz et al, 2019).
A challenge of Medicaid is that is now the largest single payer of healthcare in
the nation (Melillo, 2019). This is very challenging following the loss of work
due to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Melillo, about $600 billion is
spent annually to help fight improve health for the vulnerable populations in
the country (2019). Another challenge is the difficulty revolution to spread
state to state, obstructing the comparison of quality metrics because it is a
federated program between sates and the federal government (Melillo, 2019).
References:
Melilli, G. (2019). Experts outline Medicaid challenges, potential reforms.
https://www.ajmc.com/view/experts-outline-medicaid-challenges-potential-
reforms
Rudowitz, R., Garfield, R., & Hinton, E. (2019). 10 things to know about
medicaid: Setting the facts straight. https://www.kff.org/medicaid/issue-
brief/10-things-to-know-about-medicaid-setting-the-facts-straight/
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