title: Lessons From Medicaid's Divergent Paths On Mental Health And Addiction Services.
abstract: Over the past fifty years Medicaid has taken divergent paths in financing mental health and addiction treatment. In mental health, Medicaid became the dominant source of funding and had a profound impact on the organization and delivery of services. But it played a much more modest role in addiction treatment. This is poised to change, as the Affordable Care Act is expected to dramatically expand Medicaid's role in financing addiction services. In this article we consider the different paths these two treatment systems have taken since 1965 and identify strategic lessons that the addiction treatment system might take from mental health's experience under Medicaid. These lessons include leveraging optional coverage categories to tailor Medicaid to the unique needs of the addiction treatment system, providing incentives to addiction treatment programs to create and deliver high-quality alternatives to inpatient treatment, and using targeted Medicaid licensure standards to increase the quality of addiction services.
authors.affiliation: Christina Andrews is an assistant professor in the College of Social Work, University of South Carolina, in Columbia.
authors.forename: Christina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Andrews
authors.affiliation: Colleen M. Grogan (cgrogan@uchicago.edu) is a professor in the School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago, in Illinois.
authors.forename: Colleen M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Grogan
authors.affiliation: Marianne Brennan is a doctoral student in the School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago.
authors.forename: Marianne
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Brennan
authors.affiliation: Harold A. Pollack is a professor in the School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago.
authors.forename: Harold A
authors.initials: HA
authors.lastname: Pollack
mesh_terms: D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000458:organization & administration*; D018166:Health Care Reform; D006801:Humans; D008484:Medicaid / Q000191:economics / Q000458:organization & administration*; D008603:Mental Health; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders; D014481:United States
keywords: Medicaid; Mental Health/Substance Abuse; Organization and Delivery of Care