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More Undocumented Immigrant Children in U.S. to Receive Health Care Stateline by Michael Ollove — Last year, California extended full Medicaid benefits to child immigrants, no matter their immigration status, if their families otherwise meet the income thresholds for the joint federal-state health insurance program for the poor and disabled. Oregon just followed suit, joining the five other states plus Washington, D.C. that extend Medicaid health benefits to children living in the country illegally. Immigration advocates welcomed the news, but with the Trump administration cracking down on illegal immigration, they don’t expect to see similar laws enacted in other states in the near future. “When it comes to covering kids here illegally, there aren’t that many more states that are going to join that camp and a fair number of states that are definitely in the other camp,” said Randy Capps, research director of the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank that studies migration in the United States and abroad.
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Medicaid, Explained: Why It's Worse to Be Sick in Some States Than Others Vox by Liam Brooks, Liz Scheltens and Mallory Branga — Medicaid, an insurance program that covers one in five Americans, can look completely different depending on where you live. That’s because Medicaid is not one program but 50. Unlike Medicare, which covers all Americans 65 and older, Medicaid is administered at the state level. Individual states have a huge amount of control when it comes to deciding who qualifies and what care they can receive. While the federal government sets some requirements, the decision-making power of individual states means there are some places where it’s worse to be sick than others. Put simply, Medicaid works, even if it works better in some states than others. But how did we arrive at this complicated system in the first place? Many countries around the world offer single-payer health care or tightly regulate private insurers to make sure every person can get coverage for what they need. So why didn’t that system catch on in the U.S.?