Acceoting Medicaid Patients. Select a health care facility or service that accepts Medicaid.

Accepting Medicaid Patients
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Accepting Medicaid Patients
Medicaid is a program initiated and run by the state and federal United States government, which offers healthcare coverage for more than seventy-five million U.S citizens (Medicaid, 2018). When coupled with the Children’s Healthcare Insurance Program, Medicare covers disabled citizens, seniors, parents, children, and pregnant women. The program mainly covers individuals from low-income families, children, and pregnant women (Medicaid, 2018). Coverage also requires the citizens to be eligible by passing certain financial and non-financial requirements. The 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) gave states the opportunity to expand Medicaid and cover almost every low-income U.S citizen who is aged below sixty-five years. The expansion has also allowed the states to extend adult coverage. However, these expansions have a great effect on hospitals. As hospitals strive to capitalize on ACA programs such as Medicaid, they have experienced uneven financial impacts (Barlas, 2014). According to a report from a health care analysis of earnings of almost 200 hospitals, the margins for both investor-owned and not-for-profit hospitals narrowed significantly, regardless of the improving economy (Barlas, 2014). In general, a small number of hospitals were able to experience a positive margin of operation. Since the federal government is responsible for Medicaid, the payments received by hospitals for offering care to patients does not necessarily reflect the charge for the services, and in some cases, the payments can be below the costs, which can result in a shortfall (Cunningham, Rudowitz, Young, Garfield, Foutz, 2016). There have been heightened efforts by the state and federal governments to increase the acceptance of Medicaid in healthcare facilities in Michigan and other states. The acceptance of Medicaid, however, can affect how these facilities operate. This essay seeks to focus on the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute and how accepting Medicaid can affect the institute.
Low Medicaid Reimbursement
One hardship that can be brought about by Medicaid is low reimbursement as compared to private payers. For every medical institution to stay in business, they require to make profits. However, an institution that has a large Medicaid base can tend to make less profit. This can be brought about by the low reimbursements offered to the institutions, which tend to be lower than those of other commercial insurers as well as the low rate of compensation. Such can be the case for Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute. A majority of patients who rely on Medicaid are low-income earners, and this means that they are not in an ability to contribute enough revenue to cater for their treatments.
Moreover, reimbursements from Medicaid are so low that a patient can pay no more than $25 for office visits (Sack, 2010). There is a likelihood that Medicaid patients in Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute will also pay such little amount of money for office visits, and in this case, the doctors at the hospital can be frustrated and fail to offer quality care for the cancer patients. The low Medicaid reimbursements are normally lower to ke...