Anytime a State decides to take part in Medicaid, they must be aware that there is a minimum set of benefits that they should offer for certain groups. They also have the choice to cover additional services and receive federal funds for the cost of those benefits. Nevertheless, the states count on flexibility to design their own benefits package and they will always vary from one state to another.

Among the basic services that must be included within all the packages offered, Medicaid beneficiaries are entitled to receive: nursing home care, hospital care (in as well as outpatients), physician services, x-ray and lab services, family planning services, periodic screening, treatments for children, family planning services, health center and rural health clinic services and nurse midwife and nurse practitioner services.

As said before, the states also have the choice to offer additional services and receive federal matching funds for those services. Within this modality, different kind of attentions can be provided such as prescription drugs, dental care and vision care, institutional care for mentally retarded individuals, personal care for individuals with disabilities, home and community care for elders.

The states manage their own policies of discretion surrounding the amount, duration and scope of the services that they give. Nevertheless, the one thing that must prevail always is that services must be “sufficient in amount, duration, and scope to reasonably achieve its purpose.” This means that the state is not entitled to limit the time coverage of the services provided by Medicaid. Moreover, the states must never condition the services based on the diagnosis or illness of the individual. For example, AIDS patients cannot be excluded from the services under any circumstance and the same goes for elders. AIDS patients and elders are two of the groups who use Medicaid more often.

View more Free Content by covermehealth at GetYourContent.com

Visit CoverMeHealthInsurance.com for all you need to know about Health Insurance Coverage.

Related News

WellPoint Draws Flak For Unfulfilled Promise To Help Uninsured
The health insurance company WellPoint delivered on only about one-fifth of a $30-million pledge to help the uninsured, the Los Angeles Times reports. "It was not the first time the nation's largest insurer cast itself as an agent of change...

Report Cites Rise In Uninsured Middle-Class Americans
A report released Wednesday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Barely Hanging On: Middle-Class and Uninsured, looks at the rise in the level of uninsured middle-class people in the last eight years. USA Today reports on the most significant national statistics affecting middle-class families earning between $45,000 to $85,000 annually...

Lawsuit Shows Insurer Targeted HIV Patients For 'Rescission'
A court case has revealed that the insurer Fortis, now called Assurant Health, automatically targeted customers diagnosed with HIV for fraud investigations geared toward finding reasons to revoke their coverage, Reuters reports...

House Democrats Continue Push For Weekend House Vote On Health Reform Measure
House Democratic leaders continued efforts to pick-up support for health reform in the House while also tinkering around the edges of the overhaul legislative package --all in anticipation of a Sunday vote in the House...

GOP Strategy: Delay, Block, Repeal
As Democrats focus on advancing health overhaul legislation in the House, Senate Republicans are plotting ways to delay or block the effort, Politico reports. "Republican aides have been mining the Senate's arcane parliamentary rules for an attack that aims at striking elements both broad and narrow from the bill, weakening the measure and ultimately defeating it...

Advertising, Fundraising Money Talk In Health Care Debate
NPR's Julie Rovner fact-checked several of the television ads being run about the health care debate...

Catholic Nuns, Some Catholic Lawmakers, Announce Support For Health Care Overhaul
The Los Angeles Times: "Their numbers and influence may be declining, but American nuns demonstrated Wednesday what generations of schoolchildren already knew: They are a force to be reckoned with...

CBO Is Straining Under The Weight Of Health Care Requests
The Congressional Budget Office is feeling the strain of dealing with the high-profile requests for scoring health care legislation as Democrats move toward releasing a reconciliation bill, "a stressor that may have contributed to the recent incorrect scoring of a draft House provision," Politico reports...

Idaho, Virginia Gear Up For Fight To Defeat Individual Mandate; NY Law Sets Procedure For Decisions For Unresponsive Patients
The Associated Press: "Idaho is leading the charge in a states-rights push to defeat a proposal in Congress that would require people to buy health insurance, a key piece of reforms being pushed by President Barack Obama. Republican Gov. C.L...

Today's Opinions And Editorials
Stop The Bleeding In California Los Angeles Times If California ever needed the federal government to enact a universal plan of its own, that time is now (Harold Meyerson, 3/18).Access, Access, Access The New York Times In short, great health care is often less about breakthrough technologies than it is about access...