Medicaid is the federal government's single biggest social welfare program aimed at helping the poor. It has grown steadily since its founding, aside from a brief growth spurt after Obamacare was passed, and currently serves about 70 million people representing more than 20% of the total US population:
The cost of Medicaid grew rapidly through the '80s and '90s thanks to the high growth rate of medical costs in general. However, its cost has mostly flattened out over the past couple of decades:
Medicaid is financed jointly by the federal government and by state governments. Last year, total spending on Medicaid amounted to $650 billion, of which one-third was paid by the states and two-thirds by the federal government.
Data through 2017 comes from the 2018 CMS actuarial report here. Data from 2018-2020 was extrapolated from growth rates reported by the Kaiser Family Foundation here.
All power to Medicaid! The Great Society medical programs are without a doubt a few of the greatest advances of US civilization in the 20th century.
I'd be curious to know what % of the population is on either Medicaid or Medicare.
An estimated 58 million individuals (18.1% of the U.S. population) were enrolled in Medicare in 2019. The programaccounted for $799 billion (22.2% of overall HCE).
Anestimated64million individuals (19.8%oftheU.S. population) received Medicaid or CHIP in 2019, and the programs accounted for $633 billion (17.6% of overall HCE).
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IF10830.pdf
Nursing home care will typically put people on Medicaid, though a number of states have effectively stopped that. It's expensive. To go on Medicaid, you have to burn through your assets.
https://assets.aarp.org/rgcenter/il/fs10r_homes.pdf
A big driver of Medicaid is Long Term Care especially with an aging population. Most states have done a good job "rebalancing" LTC costs by keeping people in the community versus nursing facility care.
Is the expenditure by enrollee adjusted for CPI inflation or medical inflation? We know that in some years, medical costs rose more rapidly than consumer costs. I guess my question is, are we buying more medical services per enrollee or do the same services just cost more?
This is what democratic administrations need to do... simply improve upon the management of existing social welfare programs. There is little else that can be accomplished when half of the states are run by criminals and gangsters (aka republicans).
All of whom -- the criminals & gangsters -- are, in the end, on the same payroll as you are.
Being an extrapolation that should be a dashed line to set it apart from the rest.
And in the vein of extrapolation, taking Kevin’s 70 million people at $650 billion that comes-in at a little over $3 trillion a year for 331 million people.
Particularly if you assume that the people not covered by Medicaid have the exact same medical needs as the non-Medicaid population. Considering that most Medicaid funds go to coverage of disabled people and elderly people, that's probably not a good assumption.
At the same time, Medicaid reimburses at generally lower rates yes? Still, a possible sanity check would be against overall per-capita spending.
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/poverty/news/2017/07/20/436243/receives-medicaid-state-state-breakdown/ Is something I’ve taken only a cursory look at but seems to paint a broader picture of the demographics
How much do the 331 million people pay today?