“The elderly and disabled account for two-thirds of the spending because of [their] greater health needs and more costly medical and long-term care,” Ms. Salganicoff said. On average, a low-income adult on Medicaid, typically a mother, costs about $2,000 a year to treat, whereas a disabled elderly beneficiary costs about $12,000 a year to treat.
Women comprise more than 70% of the adult Medicaid population and are more likely than men to qualify because of their lower incomes and status as single, low-income parents of children, she said.
“Forty percent of poor women are still uninsured,” Ms. Salganicoff said.
Nearly half of the women on Medicaid have children under the age of 18 in the household; one in five of these women are over the age of 65, and the remaining third don't have children in the household but often qualify based on a disability. Those without children or a disability may never qualify for the program “no matter how poor they get,” she said.
Although women of color are more likely to be low income, half of all women on Medicaid are white.
“Women on Medicaid are more than four times as likely to report their health as fair or poor,” because low-income people tend to have more health issues, Ms. Salganicoff said.
Medicaid covers half of the women in the United States with a permanent physical or mental impairment who live in a community setting. This percentage is even higher among institutionalized women—Medicaid pays for the care of nearly three-fourths of the residents in nursing homes.
Relatively new to Medicaid assistance are uninsured women with breast and cervical cancer, Ms. Salganicoff said. In 2000, treatment was extended as an optional Medicaid benefit for women screened under a program established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1990, she said. “In California alone, 10,000 women got treatment under this program.”