How Medicaid reaches into the middle class

The New York Times details how Medicaid plays an important safety-net role regarding long-term care costs.  Meanwhile, some states are wrestling with ways to cut the program's eligibility.

The New York Times: With Medicaid, Long-Term Care Of Elderly Looms As A Rising Cost
Medicaid has long conjured up images of inner-city clinics jammed with poor families. Its far less-visible role is as the only safety net for millions of middle-class people whose needs for long-term care, at home or in a nursing home, outlast their resources (Bernstein, 9/6).

CQ HealthBeat: States Try Different Routes To Cut Medicaid Eligibility
Earlier this year, Maine and Illinois officials had a similar goal: to scale back the number of people who were eligible for Medicaid in their states. But each took a different approach, and the outcomes couldn't be more different. Each wanted to get around rules in the 2010 health care law that require states to maintain, until 2014, Medicaid eligibility policies that are at least as generous as those in place when the overhaul was signed in March 2010. Many states have complained that those "maintenance of effort" rules are too restrictive at a time when state budgets are in turmoil and legislators are looking for cuts. But federal officials say the requirements have prevented millions of people from losing coverage during the national economic downturn (Adams, 9/6).