Both Medicare and Medicaid are the primary national health insurance in the United States. Being established in the middle of the 20th century, both of them have significantly contributed to the spreading of medical coverage among the citizenry and find a ready market nowadays. Being one of the largest states with a population of more than 21 million, Florida has incurred this influence, but with particular specialties (Smith, 2017). Therefore, the goal of this paper is to compare the consequences of both programs in Florida and decide which one has a more significant impact.
It is worthy of note that Medicaid coverage in Florida is not similar as compared to other states. It is one of 12 states, which has not expanded Medicaid eligibility, as it was allowed by the Affordable Care Act (Norris, 2020a). This way, Florida’s eligibility standards imply children, pregnant women, and adults with independent children. Norris (2020a) claims that “about 3.6 million people in Florida are eligible for Medicaid in Florida, and about 235,000 Florida children are enrolled in the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) as of May 2020” (2020a, para. 2) The refusal to expand the program has affected the states’ economy. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute presented figures that “Florida was projected to lose out on $66.1 billion in Medicaid funding—more than any other state” (as cited in Norris, 2020a, para. 26). By contrast with other states, the losses due to this decision are the most significant.
The situation is different for Medicare in this region to some extent. According to Norris (2020b), Medicare enrollment contained 4640169 people in June 2020, which is 21 percent of the state’s population. The rate is even higher than the percentage of enrollment around the U.S. The majority of beneficiaries are elderly citizens aged from 65. This group is estimated as 87% of the entire Medicare beneficiaries in Florida. These assessments are extremely beneficial for the state, as it is the “second-highest percentage of 65+ residents in the country” (Norris, 2020b, para. 11). Young people have applied to the program too in case of having disabilities including temporary ones. Furthermore, in 2018, Florida was included in the top-5 states, in which Medicare’s average per-enrollee expenditures are more than $11,000 (Norris, 2020b). As is evident from the aforementioned, Medicare has elicited a response from the population to a larger extent as compared to Medicaid. For this reason, it may be considered that in Florida, Medicare’s impact is more considerable.
References
Smith, D. G. (2017). Entitlement politics: Medicare and Medicaid, 1995-2001. Routledge.
Norris, L. (2020a). Florida and the ACA’s Medicaid Expansion. Health Insurance, Web.
Norris, L. (2020b). Medicare in Florida. Web.