How important is Medicaid to children and children’s hospitals?
• Medicaid is the nation’s largest children’s health care program, providing 28 million low-income and disabled children – one out of every three children – with health care benefits for part or all of a year. Medicaid provides a cost effective safety net for children: Although more than half of all Medicaid recipients are children, less than 23 percent of Medicaid funds are spent on children, including disabled children. It costs Medicaid an average of $5,338 to care for an adult, and only $1,942 on average for a child. Medicaid’s role in children’s hospitals: • Just 3 percent of all hospitals, freestanding children’s hospitals and hospitals within larger hospitals provide 38 percent of the inpatient care required by children assisted by Medicaid and virtually all of their inpatient subspecialty care for serious conditions such as cancer or heart surgery. On average, 54 percent of inpatient days, 50 percent of total outpatient visits and 57 percent of emergency room visits at freestan
