“Medicaid Efforts to Address Racial Health Disparities”

 

“Medicaid Efforts to Address Racial Health Disparities,” by Akash Pillai, Elizabeth Hinton, Robin Rudowitz, and Samantha Artiga, KFF

“Racial and ethnic disparities in health remain persistent in the United States, driven by inequities in access to and utilization of health care and social and economic factors that drive health, often referred to as social determinants of health (SDOH), that are rooted in historic and ongoing racism and discrimination. As a major source of health coverage for people of color, Medicaid programs are an important potential mechanism to address racial health disparities. Recent coverage gains across racial and ethnic groups between 2019-2022 were largely driven by increases in Medicaid enrollment as disenrollments were paused for three years during the pandemic related continuous enrollment provision. However, unwinding of the continuous enrollment provision could have disproportionate effects on people of color.”

LTC Comment, Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform:

Au contraire when it comes to long-term care. Medicaid does not relieve structural LTC racism. It is rather a primary cause. By allowing even high-income people with large exempt assets to qualify and use their key money to buy into the best LTC facilities and services, Medicaid disproportionately benefits the affluent and shortchanges the poor it is supposed to help. I’ll have much more to say about this in the future, but here some LTC Bullets to consider in the meantime: Long-Term Care Disparities: Are They Racism or Only Economic Inequity?; Long-Term Care Racism: Diagnosis, Treatment, and Cure; Long-Term Care Racism; You Pay for California’s LTC Profligacy and Structural Racism.