Medicaid Long-Term Care Spending Tops $106 Billion

Total Medicaid expenditures for long-term care increased 3.8 percent in 2008 reaching a total of $106.4 billion.  Medicaid is the nation’s poverty program with expenses borne by federal and state taxpayers.

Institutional long-term care spending by the Medicaid program increased 2.9 percent in fiscal year 20908 to $61.0 billion according to the report issued by Thomson Reuters.  Medicaid nursing home expenditures increased 4.1 percent to $49 billion. 

“State governments don’t have the ability to print money and taxpayers are having to pay an ever-increasing cost for long-term care services,” explains Jesse Slome, executive director of the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance.  “If the trend continues, people can expect to see reduced services across the board.”

New York State reported the largest total Medicaid expenditures for long-term care services.  The total expenditures exceeded $18.4 billion.  Other states with the largest annual taxpayer outlays included California ($10.0 billion); Pennsylvania ($6.4 billion); Texas ($5.1 billion); Ohio ($4.8 billion); Florida ($4.3 billion) and Illinois ($3.2 billion).

A number of states saw spending for institutional long-term care expenses paid for under the Medicaid program increase by as much as 86 percent.   Medicaid’s costs rose 86.1 percent in Mississippi.  But even states like Florida saw a 64.1 percent increase.  The smallest increase was Oregon at 25.2 percent.

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