Medicaid

What to Watch

Medicaid: What to Watch in 2026

Medicaid: What to Watch in 2026

In this brief, KFF explores how state fiscal pressures are likely to converge with the implementation of the 2025 reconciliation law to affect Medicaid coverage, financing, and access to care over the next year, especially leading up to the midterm elections.

Work Requirements

Challenges with Implementing Work Requirements

Many states are anticipating a variety of implementation challenges, including the need for complex system changes, a compressed implementation timeline, and limited staff capacity.

What is the Medicaid Hardship Exception?

The number of Medicaid expansion enrollees who ultimately qualify for the high unemployment hardship exception will depend on how the exception is implemented and how unemployment rates changes.

Tracking Implementation of the 2025 Reconciliation Law: Medicaid Work Requirements

KFF’s interactive tracks key data and policies that will affect how states implement Medicaid work requirements, which are required under the 2025 budget reconciliation law starting in January 2027. The tracker includes state-level data on Medicaid enrollment and renewal outcomes as well as current state enrollment and renewal policies.

2025 Medicaid Home Care survey

Payment Rates Ahead of 2025 Reconciliation Law

This issue brief describes Medicaid payment rates for home care and other workforce supports that are in place in 2025, before the majority of the 2025 reconciliation law provisions start taking effect.

Home Care Support for Family Caregivers in 2025
number of responding states, including DC, that allow payments for family caregivers by type of home care program and type of caregiver.

This issue brief describes the availability of self-directed services and supports for family caregivers in Medicaid home care in 2025, before most provisions in the reconciliation law take effect.

States’ Management of Home Care Spending

This issue brief describes the mechanisms states are currently using to limit Medicaid spending on home care and their plans for adopting new mechanisms in state fiscal year (FY) 2026.

Waiting Lists for Medicaid Home Care, 2016 to 2025
A Look at Waiting Lists for Medicaid Home- and Community-Based Services from 2016 to 2025

This data note provides new information about waiting lists in Medicaid home care before many of the provisions in the 2025 reconciliation law go into effect.

The Essentials
  • 5 Facts: Medicaid and Provider Taxes

    This brief describe states’ current provider taxes and how the 2025 reconciliation law changed the federal rules governing them, including potential impacts across states.
  • Medicaid Financing: The Basics

    Medicaid is a major source of financing for states to provide health coverage and long-term services and supports for low-income residents. This brief examines key questions about Medicaid financing and how it works.
  • 5 Facts: Immigrants and Medicaid

    This brief provides five key facts on Medicaid and immigrants as context for understanding the potential impacts of policy changes under the Trump administration.
  • 5 Facts: Medicaid and Hospitals

    This brief explains the role of Medicaid for hospitals, including how much spending on hospital care comes from Medicaid, the share of births covered by the program, and how Medicaid expansion has impacted hospital finances.
  • 5 Facts: Medicaid and Nursing Facilities

    The substantial Medicaid savings in the reconciliation bill could have major implications for nearly 15,000 federally certified nursing facilities and the 1.2 million people living in them.
Eligibility and coverage
  • Eligibility, Enrollment, and Renewal Policies

    KFF's survey findings capture state actions that seek to improve the accuracy and efficiency of Medicaid and CHIP enrollment and renewal processes, as of January 2025.
  • Seniors and People with Disabilities

    More than 1 in 3 people with disabilities (15 million) have Medicaid (35%). In comparison, only 19% of people without disabilities have Medicaid.
  • Children with Special Needs

    Amid debates about proposed cuts to federal Medicaid spending, this brief analyzes key characteristics of children with special health care needs and explores how Medicaid provides them with coverage.
  • People With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

    Among the estimated 8 million people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD), over three million have Medicaid coverage.
  • Adults with Chronic Conditions

    Among working age adults enrolled in Medicaid, approximately three quarters have one or more chronic conditions, and nearly one-third have three or more.

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  • SCHIP Enrollment in 50 States

    Other Post

    This update shows that enrollment in SCHIP grew by 25,000 to 3,950,000 in 2004, reversing a four quarter decline in enrollment since June 2003, but still slightly below the program's enrollment peak. Report (.

  • Wisconsin’s BadgerCare Plus Program: Moving Forward on Health Reform Amid a Recession

    Fact Sheet

    This fact sheet provides a brief overview of Wisconsin's BadgerCare Plus Program, a three-year-old initiative that merged the state's three distinct Medicaid programs for children, parents and pregnant women into a single comprehensive health coverage program. It also expanded eligibility to provide near-universal coverage for children and greater coverage for parents and childless adults.

  • Health Care Coverage and Financing Issues in California:  An October 2005 Update

    Issue Brief

    Health Care Coverage and Financing Issues in California: An October 2005 Update This brief summarizes recent health insurance coverage trends in California and the Medi-Cal program, provides an overview of the state’s newly adopted FY 2005-06 budget agreement, and discusses key issues driving the current health policy agenda.

  • Medicaid and the Budget Control Act: What Options Will Be Considered?

    Issue Brief

    On August 2, 2011, President Obama signed the Budget Control Act of 2011 into law. The Act was designed to reduce federal spending and raise the debt ceiling. It established the Joint Select Committee, also known as the “Super Committee,” tasked with decreasing projected deficits by $1.5 trillion between FY2012 and FY2021.

  • Case Study: Georgia’s Money Follows the Person Demonstration

    Issue Brief

    This brief reports on a case study of Georgia's Money Follows the Person (MFP) demonstration program, describing key features of the program and highlighting recent program experiences. The Georgia Department of Community Health (DCH) implemented the program in September 2008. In 2005, before the demonstration began, Georgia’s long-term care expenditures were $1.

  • Small Area Variations and the ACA’s Coverage Expansions

    From Drew Altman

    A new Kaiser analysis sheds light on how the country might react to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) when it is implemented.  It looks at how the benefits of the ACA's coverage expansions will vary around the country by census areas (technically, Public Use Microdata Areas, or PUMAs).