How Medicaid helps older Americans

Abstract

The brief's key findings are: (1) Medicaid provides low-income retirees with critical health benefits by offering insurance directly, covering Medicare costs, or paying for long-term care. (2) Recently, the Medicaid expansion has also helped reduce the uninsured rate among workers nearing retirement. (3) The need for this array of benefits will grow as the population ages and medical costs continue to rise faster than household incomes. (4) But older Americans are only a small part of Medicaid, so their future depends on the outcome of the broader debate over the program's size and scope.