Cantor Joel C, Thompson Frank J, Farnham Jennifer
Center for State Health Policy, Rutgers University, 112 Paterson St., New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1293, USA.
Inquiry. 2013 Spring;50(1):71-84. doi: 10.5034/inquiryjrnl_50.01.04.
Medicaid insures more than 65 million low-income people, and the Affordable Care Act of 2010 gives states the option to enroll millions more. Historical trends in state Medicaid effort possess important implications for health policy going forward. Nearly all states steadily ratcheted up their Medicaid effort in the period from 1992 to 2009, holding out promise that most will sustain their programs and ultimately participate in the expansion authorized by the Affordable Care Act. But the growth in Medicaid over this period did not appreciably curtail vast geographic disparities in program benefits that threaten to undermine the goals of health reform.
医疗补助计划为超过6500万低收入人群提供保险，2010年的《平价医疗法案》赋予各州选择权，可让更多数百万人加入该计划。各州在医疗补助计划方面的历史趋势对未来的卫生政策具有重要影响。在1992年至2009年期间，几乎所有州都稳步加大了对医疗补助计划的投入，这意味着大多数州将维持其计划，并最终参与《平价医疗法案》授权的扩大计划。但在此期间，医疗补助计划的增长并未显著缩小该计划福利方面巨大的地域差距，这些差距有可能破坏医疗改革的目标。
