Mathematica Policy Research

Few employer-sponsored and private insurance plans offer the range of services that workers with disabilities may need. Medicaid Buy-In programs are a viable option that allows these workers to receive needed services without spending down for Medicaid. This report describes findings from a study of characteristics and service utilization of higher-income enrollees compared to regular Medicaid enrollees. Providing these programs may keep higher-income workers with disabilities employed.

The Affordable Care Act authorized the Medicaid Health Home State Plan Option, which allows states to design health homes to provide comprehensive care coordination for Medicaid beneficiaries with chronic conditions. States will receive enhanced federal funding to support the rollout of this new integrated model of care. This link directs to the Health Home Resource Center that provides technical assistance services for states as they submit their proposals for these health homes to CMS.

As increasing numbers of state Medicaid agencies implement both MFP and MLTSS programs, it is important to understand how they can work together to achieve common goals -- shifting the balance of LTSS from institutional care to HCBS settings. This report examines how 5 states have structured the interface between the two programs, including overlap in eligible groups, design of Medicaid payment rates to managed care organizations (MCOs); and how MFP and MCO staff share or divide responsibility.

This issue brief revisits the use of SSA work supports among the nearly three-quarters of Buy-In Participants who also receive Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). To better understand who might benefit most from program outreach, this report explores variation in use rates by age, education, and disabling health condition. It also examines the relationship between work-support use, employment, and earnings.

This brief provides recommendations for conducting high quality systematic reviews. Systematic reviews can be useful for policy decision makers to draw accurate lessons from a large assortment of relevant studies because they identify, assess, and synthesize key pieces of evidence on policy or program effectiveness. Increasing high quality systematic reviews will provide decision makers with a greater number of useful evidence summaries that can inform decision making.

Using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health as a framework, this paper identifies definitions of disability for transition-age youth that can be used to compare and contrast statistics on the characteristics and outcomes of this population across different surveys.