Apple Health, KanCare, ARHOME, Med-QUEST, and Medi-Cal: What do these have in common?
They’re all Medicaid programs.
States, which administer Medicaid after receiving federal funds, often change the name of the program, sometimes even branding it to reflect state pride, such as Husky Health in Connecticut or SoonerCare in Oklahoma. They also change the name of the federally funded CHIP healthcare program for children, at times with cutesy names like PeachCare for Kids in Georgia and CubCare in Maine.
Some Medicaid programs even have a private insurer’s name attached to it because many states farm out contracts to managed care organizations, or MCOs, to administer the programs.
Those changes, though, can cause confusion. A pair of recent studies noted that state-specific names and MCO plan designs can prevent people from realizing they are receiving a public benefit.
That disconnect adds to the larger confusion over Medicaid itself, who it covers, and why. It simply isn’t a poor people’s program, a stigma that motivates states to change the name in the first place. It covers our children, grandparents, and Americans with disabilities.
As cuts to government healthcare programs become a real possibility, experts say it’s crucial for Americans to understand the scope and necessity of the Medicaid program.
“It’s one of those situations where our best intentions can backfire,” said Jessica Calarco, a sociologist and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“When we change the way these programs operate, when we refuse to use words like welfare, it makes it more difficult for people to understand who is and who isn’t benefiting from these programs and to see the benefits that they themselves are getting as well.”
In this June 27, 2017, file photo, protesters block a street during a demonstration against the Republican bill in the US Senate to replace former President Barack Obama’s healthcare law, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File) ·ASSOCIATED PRESS
While Medicaid is a joint federal-state program, “states administer Medicaid programs fairly independently,” Melissa Hafner, a health policy researcher at the American Institutes for Research, told Yahoo Finance.
Certain groups must be eligible for the program, and specific core benefits must be included under Title XIX of the Social Security Act, which established Medicaid.
“But beyond that, states have a lot of flexibility in the scope of their Medicaid program,” she said.
That includes who’s eligible, what services enrollees can receive, what states will pay for Medicaid services, and how states pay — either directly to healthcare providers or through MCOs, which are often private health insurers.
The federal government provides a portion of the funding to a state’s Medicaid program. States with higher rates of poverty receive a higher federal match.
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Nationally, 1 in 5 people are on Medicaid, according to KFF. That includes nearly 2 in 5 children, 1 in 6 adults, over 1 in 4 adults with disabilities, almost 1 in 2 children with special healthcare needs, and 5 in 8 nursing home residents.
In fact, Medicaid is the only federal program that offers Americans long-term care insurance. Medicare does not, and the need for this type of care is only becoming more acute as the baby boomers age and can no longer care for themselves.
Medicaid also covers 41% of all births in the US, 29% of non-elderly adults with mental illness, and 40% of non-elderly adults with HIV. One in 5 people on Medicare also receive extra coverage from Medicaid.
And yes, it covers our most financially vulnerable Americans — over 8 in 10 children in poverty, and almost half of adults in poverty are on Medicaid.
“This is likely something that helps someone you know or love actually make ends meet,” said Lauren Rivera, a sociology professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University who started a discussion over Medicaid names on social media. “I would say that every person in this country — if they’re not already receiving Medicaid — is one step away from needing it.”
Most experts I spoke to think the reason many states drop the “Medicaid” from their program names is to reduce a stigma and encourage more people who are eligible for the assistance to sign up. While surveys show high support for Medicaid funding overall, enrolling in the program itself on a personal level can bring up mixed feelings.
Consider this account from Calarco, who interviewed 250 women from pregnancy through their first couple of years postpartum for her recent book “Holding it Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net.”
One mother, Erin, and her husband were struggling to afford childcare, both working split shifts to watch their children. Exhausted by that arrangement, Erin dropped out of the workforce to stay at home with their kids, but the couple was going broke trying to afford health insurance at the same time. When Medicaid was expanded in her state, Erin was reluctant to sign up.
“She felt like ‘it’s not for people like us,'” Calarco recounted, saying that they weren’t poor enough to need it.
There’s also an othering factor around Medicaid, said Rivera. It’s a program for this group or that group, one “that is different from me. Attempts to rename the programs try to make them more friendly, more appealing, more palatable.”
Signing up for TennCare or Healthy Connections in South Carolina may not sting as much, and that’s exactly the point. The drawback, according to a 2024 study, is the effort “may muddle understanding of the program as a government-provided benefit.”
“The inner workings of how programs like Medicaid are funded is far too complex for the average person to understand,” Calarco said. “It’s hard for people to parse out that when we talk about your state Medicaid program, that’s connected to and deeply dependent on federal Medicaid funding.”
There’s a similar concern for the 75% of Medicaid enrollees who sign up for a plan managed by an MCO.
For example in Georgia, those eligible for Medicaid register for the Georgia Families program, which then provides members a choice of three health plans managed by an MCO for adults. The three health plans are provided by Amerigroup Community Care, CareSource, or Peach State Health Plan. Absent from these plan names? Medicaid.
Another study published in 2018 found that Medicaid recipients are less likely to self-report that they are on the program when MCO plans are designed to obscure government involvement. Enrollees are less able to recognize how they personally benefit from Medicaid, the study found, making it more difficult for them “to engage in the civic sphere as informed advocates for their self-interest.”
A “GOP Budget” sign is seen as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., conducted his weekly news conference in the Capitol Visitor Center on Feb. 27, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images) ·Tom Williams via Getty Images
And that there is the rub.
Senate lawmakers are set later this month to vote on which parts of the government should be slashed to reach the $880 billion in spending reductions the House GOP advanced in its budget resolution last week.
The resolution itself didn’t state those cuts must come from Medicaid, but the reductions must come from the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees the program and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
“When it comes to mobilizing for this much-needed part of our social safety net, it complicates things if people don’t necessarily know that they’re on it,” Rivera said. “It is really important for people to have a clear understanding that programs like Medicaid are essential for a functioning society.”
No matter what it’s called.
Janna Herron is a Senior Columnist at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on X @JannaHerron.
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