Medicaid commission report quantifies program's 'historic size,' recommends initiatives to improve quality of care, reduce costs

According to news outlets, the report focused on the care of patients with disabilities, and steps to make sure anti-fraud efforts don't add to states' burdens.

Modern Healthcare: Medicaid, CHIP Costs Swell To $444 Billion
The second annual report from the congressionally chartered advisory group on Medicaid quantified the program's historic size and recommended a series of initiatives to improve the quality of care it funds while reducing costs and fraud. ... It reported to Congress on Thursday that the two federal-state public insurance partnership programs for the poor grew to a combined 78 million enrollees in the last fiscal year and cost $444 billion. In fiscal 2010, the combined programs covered 76 million people and cost about $400 billion (Daly, 3/15).

CQ HealthBeat: Medicaid Commission Report Focuses On People With Disabilities And Fraud-Fighting Efforts
Medicaid officials should improve tools to measure the quality of care for patients with disabilities, coordinate care for those patients and make sure that anti-fraud practices for the program don't burden the states, according to a new report by the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission. The MACPAC report notes that Medicaid, the federal-state partnership that provides care for low-income people and other groups, covers more than a fifth of the U.S. population and that patients with disabilities were the fastest-growing beneficiary group in the program. Half of the inflation-adjusted growth in Medicaid was linked to care for people with disabilities (Adams, 3/15).