Comparative Analysis Rhode Island and Florida Medicaid

The two States that I will be evaluating are Rhode Island and Florida. My home State is South Carolina. The policy concern I zero in, in an attempt to highlight how the two States identified differ from my home, is Medicaid which in essence “provides health coverage to millions of Americans, including eligible low-income adults, children, pregnant women, elderly adults and people with disabilities” (Medicaid, 2018). Despite being considered a federal program, it is important to note that benefits in this case cannot be applied uniformly across all States. This effectively means that applicants are evaluated differently in each State.

As of January 2018, my home State, South Carolina, had a total of 1,009,701 persons enrolled in both Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program. This is in comparison to 312,602 people and 4,283,784 people in Rhode Island and Florida respectively (Medicaid, 2018). It should be noted that currently, all three States already have in place “one or more of the targeted enrolment strategies outlined in guidance CMS issues on May 17, 2013, designed to facilitate enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP” (Medicaid, 2018). However, while both South Carolina and Florida have had coverage expanded to a key demographic group that would be in need of coverage, i.e. low-income adults, Rhode Island is yet to expand the said coverage to this particular demographic group.

It is also important to note that the three States also differ in the manner in which they report some key quality standards in both Children’s Health Insurance Program and CMS Medicaid core sets in the Child and Adult categories. For instance, out of a total of 16, the number of healthcare quality measures reported for the 2016 federal fiscal year in the adult core set was 12, 13, and 0, for South Carolina, Rhode Island, and Florida respectively (Medicaid, 2018).

References

Medicaid. (2018). Medicaid. Retrieved from https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/index.html