Every state has its own Medicaid program. You can learn a lot about the political environment in a state by the wording it chooses to use on its official Medicaid website. Alaska refers to Medicaid as an “entitlement program”. The state put that phrase in quotes. This speaks volumes.
Medicaid is a public, or government run, health insurance program. It is designed to cover individuals and families who are low income and who cannot afford to purchase a health plan from a private insurance company. Medicaid is funded, in part, by the federal government. It is also funded, in part, by the government of an individual state.
In Alaska, the Medicaid program is administered by the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services. Alaska is one of the states that has consistently refused to comply with the Affordable Care Act. The state refused to make its own health insurance exchange, and doesn’t appear to want to expand it’s Medicaid program, either.
The first paragraph on the official Medicaid website for Alaska says:
“Medicaid is an “entitlement program” created by the federal government, but administered by the state, to provide payment for medical services for low-income citizens. People qualify for Medicaid by meeting federal income and asset standards and by fitting into a specified eligibility. Under federal rules, DHSS has authority to limit services as long as the services provided are adequate in “amount, duration, and scope” to satisfy the recipient’s medical needs.”
The rest of the page points out that the Medicaid program started out as a program to pay for health care for poor people who were unable to work, and that it covered the aged, the blind, the disabled, and single parent families.
From there, it notes the expansions in Medicaid to cover children, and to cover women who are pregnant (both of whom can qualify under higher income limits and without asset limitations). It states that families with unemployed parents may now qualify for Medicaid, and that they will continue to have Medicaid coverage if a parent returns to work for up to one year.
It certainly sounds as though the state of Alaska is extremely resentful about having to administer a Medicaid program, and that it would rather let people who are struggling go without any access to health care coverage. I’ve done a series of blogs about the Medicaid programs in individual states, and this blog is the conclusion of that series. It is clear that Alaska does more complaining about having to administer a Medicaid program than any other state.
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