Medicaid Spending Will Join Medicare in Out Running
the Economy in Years Ahead
Long-term care for low-income senior citizens will
help drive cost to $4.9 trillion in 10 years
Oct. 19, 2008 - Under current law, spending on
Medicaid is expected to substantially outpace the rate of growth in the
U.S. economy over the next decade, according to a new annual report
released Friday by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
This is the first time the government has spotlighted Medicaid spending
as it does annually with Medicare and Social Security all three
critical programs to millions of senior citizens.
The report projects that Medicaid benefits spending
will increase 7.3 percent from 2007 to 2008, reaching $339 billion and
will grow at an annual average rate of 7.9 percent over the next 10
years, reaching $674 billion by 2017.
That compares to a projected rate of growth of 4.8
percent in the general economy.
HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt presented the report at
the fall meeting of the National Association of State Budget Officers
(NASBO).
This report should serve as an urgent reminder
that the current path of Medicaid spending is unsustainable for both
federal and state governments. We must act quickly to keep state
Medicaid programs fiscally sound, Secretary Leavitt said.
If nothing is done to rein in these costs, access
to health care for the nations most vulnerable citizens could be
threatened.
Although the CMS Office of the Actuary regularly
produces 75-year projections of Medicare expenditures for the annual
report of the Medicare Board of Trustees, the report released today is
the first annual fiscal report on Medicaid.
The Medicare Trustees Report provides detailed
information on the past and estimated future financial operations of the
Hospital Insurance and Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Funds.
This new annual report on Medicaid contains analysis of past program
trends and projections of Medicaid expenditures and enrollment for the
next 10 years only. Future reports will expand on content to include
longer-range projections and more extensive analysis.
Medicare
Critical to Long-Term Care for Senior Citizens
Elderly Americans
most frequently turn to Medicaid for long-term care, as the cost of
nursing homes and other intensive care quickly diminishes the financial
resources of many families.
Among the different types of health care services,
Medicaid plays the largest role in the funding of long-term care.
According to the 2006 National Health
Expenditure data, Medicaid is estimated to have paid for 34
percent of all home health care and 43 percent of all nursing home care
in the U.S.
Medicaid has a major responsibility for providing
long-term care because the program covers some aged and many disabled
persons, who tend to be the most frequent and most costly users of it,
and because private health insurance and Medicare often furnish only
limited coverage for such care, particularly for nursing homes.
Many people who pay for nursing home care privately
become impoverished because nursing home care is very expensive; as a
result, these people eventually become eligible for Medicaid.
Medicaid spent
$99.9 billion on long-term care and $66.6 billion on managed care and
other premiums in FY 2007
During FY 2000 through FY 2005, Medicaid growth was
faster than in the previous 6 years, with spending increasing an average
of 8.9 percent per year over the 6-year period.
Several trends contributed to this acceleration.
First, Medicaid enrollment increased at an average rate of 6.4 percent
per year between FY 2000 and FY 2005. It grew fastest between FY 2000
and FY 2002, coinciding with the 2001 economic recession, and reached a
peak of 9.3 percent in FY 2002.
While blind or
disabled enrollees and aged enrollees are the smallest enrollment groups
in Medicaid, they are projected to account for the majority of spending.
As indicated in the table below, for FY 2007, estimated benefit spending
was $126.7 billion for blind or disabled enrollees and $70.9 billion for
aged enrollees.
Combined, spending
on these two groups constituted 67 percent of Medicaid expenditures
(excluding DSH, territory expenditures, and adjustments which cannot be
allocated by eligibility group). Medicaid spending on non-disabled
children was about 19 percent of total Medicaid benefit expenditures,
and spending on non-disabled and non-aged adults was about 13 percent.
2007 Estimated Enrollment, Expenditures,
and Estimated Per Enrollee Expenditures, by Enrollment Group1
Eligibility Group
Enrollment2
(in millions)
Expenditures (in billions)
Per Enrollee Spending
Children
23.5
$57.1
$2,435
Adults
11.1
39.7
3,586
Blind/Disabled
8.5
126.7
14,858
Aged
5.0
70.9
14,058
Total
48.1
294.4
6,120
1 Does not include DSH expenditures,
territorial enrollees or payments, or adjustments.
2 Measured in person-year equivalents.
Medicaid is a federal/state partnership program
that provides health care to certain low-income people and is one of the
largest payers for health care in the United States . For both federal
and state governments, Medicaid is the largest source of general revenue
spending on health services. Notably, Medicaid is the largest source of
general revenue spending for health care for both the Federal government
and the states.
This growth rate compares to spending projections
for Medicare of 7.4 percent per year through 2017. Medicaid benefits
spending over the next 10 years is projected to be $4.9 trillion.
These amounts are in addition to that spent by
federal and state governments on the State Childrens Health Insurance
Program (SCHIP).
At this rate, Medicaid growth is projected to
slightly exceed growth in overall health care expenditures, which is
projected by CMS actuaries and economists to increase by 6.7 percent per
year over the next 10 years, or over twice the rate of general
inflation.
Additionally, Medicaids share of the Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) is projected to reach about three percent in
2017. The combined share of GDP spending for Medicare and Medicaid is
projected to be 6.9 percent by 2017.
As a partnership program, both states and the
federal government pay for services to Medicaid beneficiaries. The
federal government matches state expenditures based on a formula that
yields subsidies ranging from 50 percent to as high as 83 percent. The
average federal medical assistance percentage is 57 percent.
However, even with federal support, states report
they are struggling to meet their share of expanding Medicaid costs.
State spending on Medicaid has remained relatively stable as a share of
states budgets, averaging about 20 percent from 1995-2007. However,
some states such as Maine are already spending as much as 31 percent of
their budgets on Medicaid, according to NASBO.
NASBO is projecting that state spending on Medicaid
will increase by 4.4 percent from 2008 to 2009. NASBO says such an
increase would be more than four times the rate of growth in the average
state general fund.
High and increasing Medicaid spending clearly
leaves states less able to fund other state priorities, said Acting CMS
Administrator Kerry Weems. This new financial report confirms that
America s health care system faces significant fiscal challenges.
As a nation we must tackle the difficult job of
bringing health care costs under control and assuring that our health
care dollars are buying the highest quality, most efficient health care
services.
Other findings from the report include:
● Average Medicaid enrollment is projected to
increase 1.8 percent to 50 million people in 2008.
● During the next 10 years, average enrollment
is projected to increase at an average annual rate of 1.2 percent and to
reach 55.1 million by 2017.
● The estimated average cost of a person covered
by Medicaid in 2007 is $6,120; however, per-enrollee spending for
non-disabled children ($2,435) and adults ($3,586) was much lower than
that for aged ($14,058) and disabled beneficiaries ($14,858), reflecting
the differing health status of these groups.
● Medicaid represented 14.8 percent of all
health care spending in the United States in 2006.
● Medicaid is projected to grow as a share of
the federal budget from 7.0 percent in 2007 to 8.4 percent by 2013.
The full report is available in pdf format
click here.
Keep up with the latest news for senior citizens, baby
boomers
Oct. 19, 2008 - Under current law, spending on
Medicaid is expected to substantially outpace the rate of growth in the
U.S. economy over the next decade, according to a new annual report
released Friday by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
This is the first time the government has spotlighted Medicaid spending
as it does annually with Medicare and Social Security all three
critical programs to millions of senior citizens.