Medicaid

Medicaid is the principal public health insurance program for the poor in the United States. Jointly funded by the federal and state governments and administered by the states, Medicaid is by far the largest means-tested, safety-net program in the United States when measured by both expenditures and the number of beneficiaries. In a nation without a universal health insurance system, Medicaid has demonstrably improved the health and financial security of many Americans, from families with dependent children to the elderly in need of nursing home care. Yet the program has also been criticized for being costly, of poor quality, overly restrictive with respect to eligibility, and subject to wildly varying state standards. The 2014 expansion of Medicaid, a provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), ...