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Article: Medicaid and mental health care: can this relationship thrive?
- Article from:
- Policy & Practice
- Article date:
- March 1, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 American Public Human Services Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The Medicaid program and mental health care are inextricably related. Unfortunately, this relationship is not well understood by many professionals and advocates of either program. Despite increased sophistication in both the Medicaid and mental health policy arenas, misunderstanding and poor communication still occur, and periodically lead to problems in access to care, quality, and accountability.
It may not be too much of an exaggeration to describe the disconnect between mental health and Medicaid as a kind of cross-cultural problem. So many of the basic characteristics and "rules" vary between the systems that misunderstandings are common, even when not ...