When high levels of lead were discovered in the public water system in Flint, Mich., in 2015, Medicaid stepped in to help thousands of children get tested for poisoning and receive care.
This KHN special series examines the reach and the role of Medicaid, the federal-state program that began as a medical program for the poor but now provides a wide variety of services for a large swath of America.
When disabled children need to get to doctors’ appointments—either across town or hundreds of miles away—Medicaid pays for their transportation.
When middle-class older Americans deplete their saving to pay for costly nursing home care, Medicaid offers coverage.
The United States has become a Medicaid nation.
Althought it started as a plan to cover only the ppor; Medicaid now touches tens of millions of Americans who lice above the poverty line. The program servces as a backstop for America’s scattershot health care system, and as Republicans learned this year in their relentless battle to replace the Affordable Care Act, efforts to drastically change that can spur a backlash.
