The Medi-Cal Access Program (MCAP), formerly known as the Access for Infants and Mothers Program (AIM), is a

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

policy that grants access to

Medi-Cal The California Medical Assistance Program (Medi-Cal or MediCal) is the California implementation of the federal Medicaid program serving low-income individuals, including families, seniors, persons with disabilities, children in foster care, preg ...

to pregnant and uninsured (or whose coverage contains a co-pay over $500) mothers who would otherwise not qualify due to exceeding income guidelines. The program covers mothers that make from 200 to 300% of the

federal poverty level In the United States, poverty has both social and political implications. Based on poverty measures used by the Census Bureau (which exclude non-cash factors such as food stamps or medical care or public housing), America had 37 million peop ...

. In addition, all infants born from mothers enrolled in this program are qualified for the Medi-Cal Access Infant Program. The program is administered by the

California Department of Health Care Services The California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) is a department within the California Health and Human Services Agency that finances and administers a number of individual health care service delivery programs, including Medi-Cal, which ...

, and is paid for by the state of California and the federal government.

History and impact

AIM was first introduced in 1992, and provided for 3,000-4,000 women annually initially. It is difficult to assess the impact of AIM as it was introduced alongside many other maternal healthcare improvement policies including increasing the eligibility limit for Medi-Cal from 110% to 200% of the federal poverty line, and extending Medi-Cal to undocumented foreign-born women. However, these programs were able to reduce the number of uninsured pregnant mothers from 13.2% in 1989 to under 3% in the mid-1990s. The AIM program was initially administered by the J.P. Kennedy company of Pasadena, California, under a contract with the State of California. Enrollment, eligibility verification, and payment of benefits was managed by custom software developed by Montgomery Ryland, Inc., a Fountain Valley, CA-based healthcare and health insurance information management company. The software, written in COBOL, was run on an IBM AS/400 midrange computer, and during its first year of service was maintained and enhanced by a single developer/analyst, Jim Rothwell, a former Montgomery-Ryland employee who was later contracted by J.P. Kennedy to provide on-going support for the software system.

References

{{Reflist Healthcare in California Government of California

History and impact

See also

References