The Challenge of Medicaid Transportation

Wow! I thought these presentations were very informative. Hope to have more events like this.

It's interesting that Medicaid is the only federal program that guarantees transportation, and that it does so not because of how it was written but because court cases determined that it was not actually operating as an entitlement if only those with resources – transportation – could access the care. You have to wonder whether policy changes currently underway would move towards making healthcare an entitlement and then making medical transportation part of that. But since it is administered by states it depends on states to have and dispense the resources that make the entitlement a real entitlement. On the other hand, the brokerage system in Washington seems to both integrate and keep separate a long of services. It is interesting to think about how, firstly, changes in health care policy that tend towards seeing health care as an entitlement might make room for expanding the idea of nonemergency medical transportation as an integral part of the provision of services. And secondly, with the brokerage systems and the different states and possibly a different federal role in health care sometime in the future, how services might coordinate going forward – whether technology might have a role to play in that, for example.

The Medicaid eligibility floor is extremely low! Can it be increased without bankrupting the system?