Created in 1965, Medicaid is a health care program for those who have low income or are disabled. The states and federal governments jointly fund this program to cover long term care, such as nursing homes and for low-income elderly people. Under the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid was expanded to cover more people, including those who were close to or just above the federal poverty limit and those who had no children and were previously ineligible. When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that the Affordable Care Act was constitutional, it allowed states to proceed with expanding Medicaid or not without losing all of their federal Medicaid funding. As of September 2022, all but 12 states (mostly in the South) had expanded enrollment under the law. Preliminary data from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP programs reached 88.3 million Americans as of April 22.
