Medicare/Medicaid Current and Future Trends

Medicare/Medicaid

Current and Future Trends in Medicare and Medicaid

Medicare and Medicaid have been extremely important health and social welfare programs in the United States ever since their inception during Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency. The programs provide access to medical care to many millions of citizens based on issues of age, certain disabilities, and income restrictions, and many parts and entities of the medical industry as well as many individuals depend on the funding provided by these programs either to stay in business or to receive the care they need. For these reasons, understanding the major trends that exist or can be seen coming in terms of individual Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries and the provision of services to these individuals is vital for reasons of public policy and the general health and welfare of the U.S. populous.

Evidence in Literature

An examination of current literature enables one to better understand the trends that Medicare and Medicaid are facing, as the collected and analyzed results of this literature will provide both a detailed and a comprehensive view of these trends. By selecting more than one empirical study, the implications and complexities of converging trends can also be assessed, and better recommendations for policy changes and healthcare preparedness can be made. The following paragraphs contain a brief review of selected pieces of empirical research that examine and analyze current and approaching trends in Medicare and Medicaid, as well as a collective comparison and analysis of the selected research articles.

One study examined changes in the "disproportionate share adjustment" that hospitals providing Medicaid services received each year since this adjustment was legally implemented in 1986 to account for additional as-yet uncompensated costs hospitals incur when treating low-income patients. While he disproportionate share ratios remained relatively stable from 1996 through 2001, a sharp change occurred in the 2001 to 203 period, perhaps due to the economic downturn that occurred in these years and a resultant strain on low-income medical services and programs (Saleh & Callan 2006). Given the far worse economic downturn of the current period, this research has special significance and could signal that increasing cost burdens will be placed on hospitals and other Medicaid providers for several more years, and at a time when federal funding is in more jeopardy than it ever really has been.

This is especially foreboding given another trend observed in the research, which is only now actually beginning but which has been projected to persist for several decades. Though Medicare is a different program its funding is related to that of Medicaid, and enrollment figures for Medicare are expected to exponentially increase in the coming years and decades as the population of the United States ages (Johnson 2006). This means that the program will need to support many more people than it currently does, and there will be fewer (proportionally) workers paying into the system (Johnson 2006). The particular problem cited and explored by this author is prescription drug coverage, with the researcher predicting ongoing volatility in coverage laws and particulars, but truly this trend has many far-reaching implications.