American public policy is and has always been profoundly racialized. Yet, the literature on policy feedback lacks cohesive theorization of how race matters for feedback processes. This article offers a conceptual road map for studying policy feedback in the context of racialized politics. Drawing together the substantial (but largely disconnected) work that already exists in the fields of public policy and racial politics, I develop the racialized feedback framework to provide theoretical guidance on (i) when race should be a core focus of policy feedback research and (ii) how race structures the relationship between policy and polity. I argue that both the scope of the questions that scholars ask and the nature of the answers they find are altered when race is afforded an appropriately central role in research on policy feedback.
ImportanceMedicaid is the largest health insurance program by enrollment in the US and has an important role in financing care for eligible low-income adults, children, pregnant persons, older adults, people with disabilities, and people from racial and ethnic minority groups. Medicaid has evolved with policy reform and expansion under the Affordable Care Act and is at a crossroads in balancing its role in addressing health disparities and health inequities against fiscal and political pressures to limit spending.ObjectiveTo describe Medicaid eligibility, enrollment, and spending and to examine areas of Medicaid policy, including managed care, payment, and delivery system reforms; Medicaid expansion; racial and ethnic health disparities; and the potential to achieve health equity.Evidence ReviewAnalyses of publicly available data reported from 2010 to 2022 on Medicaid enrollment and program expenditures were performed to describe the structure and financing of Medicaid and characteristics of Medicaid enrollees. A search of PubMed for peer-reviewed literature and online reports from nonprofit and government organizations was conducted between August 1, 2021, and February 1, 2022, to review evidence on Medicaid managed care, delivery system reforms, expansion, and health disparities. Peer-reviewed articles and reports published between January 2003 and February 2022 were included.FindingsMedicaid covered approximately 80.6 million people (mean per month) in 2022 (24.2% of the US population) and accounted for an estimated $671.2 billion in health spending in 2020, representing 16.3% of US health spending. Medicaid accounted for an estimated 27.2% of total state spending and 7.6% of total federal expenditures in 2021. States enrolled 69.5% of Medicaid beneficiaries in managed care plans in 2019 and adopted 139 delivery system reforms from 2003 to 2019. The 38 states (and Washington, DC) that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act experienced gains in coverage, increased federal revenues, and improvements in health care access and some health outcomes. Approximately 56.4% of Medicaid beneficiaries were from racial and ethnic minority groups in 2019, and disparities in access, quality, and outcomes are common among these groups within Medicaid. Expanding Medicaid, addressing disparities within Medicaid, and having an explicit focus on equity in managed care and delivery system reforms may represent opportunities for Medicaid to advance health equity.Conclusions and RelevanceMedicaid insures a substantial portion of the US population, accounts for a significant amount of total health spending and state expenditures, and has evolved with delivery system reforms, increased managed care enrollment, and state expansions. Additional Medicaid policy reforms are needed to reduce health disparities by race and ethnicity and to help achieve equity in access, quality, and outcomes.
The geographic concentration of disadvantage is a key mechanism of inequity. In the United States, the spatial patterning of disadvantage renders it more than the sum of its individual parts and disproportionately harms economically and racially marginalized Americans. This article focuses specifically on the political effects of Medicaid beneficiaries being concentrated in particular locales. After offering a framework for conceptualizing the community-wide consequences of such policy concentration, I analyze aggregate multiyear data to examine the effect of Medicaid density on county-level voter turnout and local organizational strength. I find that, as the proportion of county residents enrolled in Medicaid increases, the prevalence of civic and political membership associations declines and aggregate rates of voting decrease. These results suggest that, if grassroots political action is to be part of a strategy to achieve health equity, policy makers and local organizations must make efforts to counteract the sometimes demobilizing "place-based" political effects of "people-based" policies such as Medicaid.
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