Earlier today, the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC) released its annual MACStats: Medicaid and CHIP Data Book for 2020. This document contains a wealth of information about the Medicaid and CHIP programs and it is the primary source of information about these two important public health insurance programs. You can access MACStats here.
This is the first MACStats to derive information from the Transformed Medicaid Statistical Information System (T-MSIS). CMS has worked with states for many years to transform the prior Medicaid Statistical Information System. The new data set contains enhanced information about Medicaid eligibility; beneficiary and provider enrollment; service utilization; claims and managed care data; and expenditure data for the two programs. As CMS noted in March of 2019, “access to high-quality, timely data is essential for ensuring robust monitoring and oversight of the Medicaid and CHIP programs.” The T-MSIS data set contains that quality and timely data.
Want to know how many people were ever enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP in 2018? The answer is 96.1 million, or 29.3% of the U.S. population (see Exhibit 1, page 3). Want to know how much Florida Medicaid spent on disproportionate share hospital payments in 2019? The answer is $236.8 million (see Exhibit 24, page 63). Want to know how much the state of Maine spent on Medicaid benefits in 2019? The answer is $2.9 billion (See Exhibit 23, page 60). Want to know how much Massachusetts received in § 1115 waiver payments in 2019? The answer is $831.2 million (see Exhibit 24, page 63). Ever wondered what percentage of Wyoming residents receive their Medicaid benefits through managed care? The answer is a minuscule 0.2%, as opposed to Tennessee’s 91.8%. (see Exhibit 29, page 78).
All this and more is available in MACPAC’s helpful, detailed and thoughtful analysis of the Medicaid an CHIP programs. The MACStats guidebook is a key data source for those who care about these important public health programs.