WASHINGTON-Kaiser Health News reported that a federal grant program is offering states $100 million to reward Medicaid recipients who make wellness efforts such as weight loss, blood pressure and cholesterol level reduction and smoking cessation.
Though states have flexibility in terms of how they design their incentives, federal guidelines suggest that Medicaid enrollees demonstrating a commitment toward health improvement be eligible to receive financial rewards such as coupons or gift certificates.
The program, authorized in the Affordable Health Care Act of 2010 (ACA) encourages states to offer incentives for healthy behavior. According to George Loewenstein, a behavioral economist at Carnegie Mellon University, the idea behind such a program is that economically disadvantaged Medicaid recipients have more to gain from such incentives. However, he told KHN he’s somewhat skeptical about whether such incentives could be effective.
KHN noted that a handful of states have tried using the corporate wellness model in conjunction with Medicaid, and have had mixed results. Furthermore, research on incentives when it comes to mitigating chronic diseases, such as diabetes, remains inconclusive.
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