title: Do Medicaid home and community based service waivers save money?
abstract: This article estimates the potential savings to the Medicaid program of using 1915c Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) waivers rather than institutional care. For Medicaid HCBS waiver expenditures of $25 billion in 2006, we estimate the national savings to be over $57 billion, or $57,338 per waiver participant in 2006 compared with the cost of Medicaid institutional care (for which all waiver participants are eligible). When taking into account a potential 50% "woodwork effect" (for people who might have refused institutional services), the saving would be $21 billion. This analysis demonstrates that HCBS waiver programs present significant direct financial savings to Medicaid long-term care (LTC) programs.
authors: Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of California-San Francisco, San Francisco, California 94118, USA. Charlene.Harrington@ucsf.edu
authors: Charlene
authors: C
authors: Harrington
authors: Terence
authors: T
authors: Ng
authors: Martin
authors: M
authors: Kitchener
mesh_terms: D003363:Cost Control; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D003688:Deinstitutionalization / Q000191:economics*; D004608:Eligibility Determination; D017048:Health Care Costs; D006699:Home Care Services / Q000191:economics*; D006801:Humans; D008134:Long-Term Care; D008484:Medicaid; D017059:Models, Econometric; D011640:Public Policy; D014481:United States