Medicaid by Any Other Name? Investigating Malleability of Partisan Attitudes Toward the Public Program.

CONTEXT: Medicaid is the largest health insurance program by enrollment in the United States. The program varies across states across a variety of dimensions, including what it's called; some states use state-specific naming conventions (e.g., MassHealth in Massachusetts). METHODS: In a pre-registered online survey experiment (n = 5,807), we test whether public opinion shifts in response to the use of state-specific Medicaid program names or the provision of information about program enrollment. FINDINGS: We find that replacing "Medicaid" with a state-specific name results in a large increase in the share of respondents reporting that they "haven't heard enough to say" how they feel about the program. This corresponds to a decrease in both favorable and unfavorable attitudes toward the program. Though confusion increases among all partisan groups, there is evidence that the state-specific names may also strengthen positive perceptions among Republicans. Providing enrollment information generally does not affect public opinion. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings offer suggestive evidence that state-specific program names may muddle understanding of the program as a government-provided benefit. Policymakers seeking to bolster support for the program or claim credit for expanding or improving it may be better served simply referring to it as "Medicaid."

Burden Of Health-Related Social Needs Among Dual- And Non-Dual-Eligible Medicare Advantage Beneficiaries.

Little information exists to inform stakeholders' efforts to screen for, address, and risk-adjust for the health-related social needs (HRSNs) of Medicare Advantage (MA) enrollees, particularly those not dually Medicaid-Medicare eligible and those younger than age sixty-five. HRSNs can include food insecurity, housing instability, transportation issues, and other factors. We examined the prevalence of HRSNs in 2019 among 61,779 enrollees in a large, national MA plan. Although HRSNs were more common among dual-eligible beneficiaries, with 80 percent reporting at least one (average, 2.2 per beneficiary), 48 percent of non-dual-eligible beneficiaries reported one or more, indicating that dual eligibility alone would have inadequately captured HRSN risk. HRSN burden was unequally distributed across multiple beneficiary characteristics, notably with beneficiaries younger than age sixty-five more likely than those ages sixty-five and older to report having an HRSN. We also found that some HRSNs were more strongly associated with hospitalizations, emergency department visits, and physician visits than others. These findings suggest the importance of considering the HRSNs of dual- and non-dual-eligible beneficiaries, as well as those of beneficiaries of all ages, when exploring how to address HRSNs in the MA population.