What is Medicaid?
Medicaid is a government-funded healthcare program that provides medical coverage for low-income families and individuals. It also helps pay for long-term care for some people with disabilities. Medicaid helps people who can't afford to buy health insurance on their own, including children and parents who are not eligible for other types of coverage such as Medicare or private insurance plans.
Medicaid was created in 1965 by President Lyndon B. Johnson with the passage of the Social Security Act, which established Medicaid as a federal-state program jointly funded by the federal government and individual states. The program was expanded under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which allowed states greater flexibility in how they design their programs and provided additional funding to expand eligibility. In 2019, more than 70 million Americans receive Medicaid benefits each month.
The program currently covers more than 60 different categories of services, including those related to mental health, substance use disorder treatment, physical disabilities and long-term care services deemed medically necessary by a doctor or other qualified healthcare professional under current state law guidelines; however, each state sets its own eligibility requirements based on its own needs assessment process that determines how much money each person or family needs in order to afford healthcare costs without going into debt.
