Entrenched Opportunity: Medicaid, Health Systems, and Solutions to Homelessness

As inequality grows, politically powerful health care institutions-namely Medicaid and health systems-are increasingly assuming social policy roles, particularly related to solutions to homelessness. Medicaid and health systems regularly interact with persons experiencing homelessness who are high users of emergency health services and who experience frequent loss of or inability to access Medicaid services because of homelessness. This research examines Medicaid and health system responses to homelessness, why they may work to address homelessness, and the mechanisms by which this occurs.

The authors collected primary data from Medicaid policies and the 100 largest health systems, along with national survey data from local homelessness policy systems, to assess scope and to measure mechanisms and factors influencing decision-making.

Nearly one third of states have Medicaid waivers targeting homelessness, and more than half of the 100 largest health systems have homelessness mitigation programs. Most Medicaid waivers use local homelessness policy structures as implementing entities. A plurality of health systems rationalizes program existence based on the failure of existing structures.

Entrenched health care institutions may bolster local homelessness policy governance mechanisms and policy efficacy. Reliance on health systems as alternative structures, and implementing entities in Medicaid waivers, may risk shifting homelessness policy governance and retrenchment of existing systems.