Medicaid’s essential investments to address health-related social needs

Expanding Medicaid’s footprint brings understandable anxieties for policymakers and service providers. Not every valuable service should be packaged as improving health, and federal policymakers are understandably leery of subsidizing states’ safety-net funding. Medicaid program administrators often lack expertise to oversee housing and other social services. Many service providers are ill-equipped to navigate the administrative burdens that Medicaid imposes. An expanded Medicaid footprint, thus, requires greater capacity among service providers and state Medicaid agencies. Successful collaborations underscore that such pragmatic barriers can be addressed, and that pertinent services can be highly cost-effective. In one study of Denver supportive housing, about half of the total cost was offset by cost reductions in jail stays, ambulance rides, and other public services.