Medicaid and Disability: The Unlikely Entitlement

Medicaid’s extensive and relatively adaptable benefit categories have proved to be singularly suitable to disabled people. The program assists almost one-half of all persons whose disabilities stop them from working. Two primary factors account for this outcome: Medicaid through accretion has taken on new functions and clienteles and, as a welfare program embracing both health and social services rather than offering social insurance, has aptly aided people with disabilities meeting its income qualifications. A proposed revision to Medicaid pending in Congress allowing persons to buy into the program would increase both its constituency and its palatability to recipients and to the broader public.

Author(s): Sandra Tanenbaum

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Volume 67, Issue S3 (pages 288–310)
Published in 1989