The Missed Opportunities of Medicaid

Dr. Sharfstein's Introduction: The federal-state mental health care program is a major payer for mental health care. Medicaid could finance additional community services needed by adults and children with severe mental illness, but it is both underutilized and inappropriately utilized in most states. The National Mental Health Association has published Operation Help: An Advocate's Guide to Medicaid, which provides detailed descriptions of how states have used Medicaid options to cover community mental health care and how they might better use these monies to improve planning and service delivery for the severely mentally ill. This month's column by the author of Operation Help recognizes the potential of Medicaid and the need to revise state Medicaid plans to reflect appropriate public health objectives.