An ideal long-term care system should take care of all the needs of consumers, however, this is not the case due to the fact that the consumer needs are too many and as well they change from time to time (Peterson & Hyer, 2016) . Specialized nursing care are required by elderly even as they age in order to preserve their wellbeing and live safely.
In Florida, the financial and health requirements of the state must be met for a person to qualify for Medicaid. A wide range of costs on health care are covered by Medicaid which comprise of visits by a doctor and prescriptions (Watts, 2014) . It can also cover specialized nursing care, rehabilitation and personal assistance for eligible low-income seniors.
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The eligibility criteria for Medicaid in Florida measures functional needs against financial needs. The financial need requires that a person have a mean annual cost of between $ 16900 and $106580 (Hu & Mortensen, 2016) . They cater for the needs of its members before, during and after a health incident. In addition, it provides a number of Medicaid waiver to seniors enabling them to pay for long term care. Furthermore, the program targets to reduce costs of care for the state and the seniors. This it does by covering a range of services thus motivating more seniors to consider nursing homes for care.
The qualifying criteria for Medicaid coverage for nursing homes in Florida is very close to an ideal criterion. There are new guidelines which were endorsed in 2011 which govern long-term care. This saw the dividing of the Statewide Managed Medical Care program into two programs Department of Elder Affairs and Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (Hu & Mortensen, 2016) . As such, Medicaid turned to be a worthwhile option for long-term care because each program covers a nursing home care for the qualifying persons (Peterson & Hyer, 2016) . Actually due to this above two thirds of Florida’s nursing home residents use Medicaid to pay for their care.
References
Hu, T., & Mortensen, K. (2016). Mandatory Statewide Medicaid Managed Care in Florida and Hospitalizations for Ambulatory Care Sensitive Conditions. Health Services Research , 53 (1), 293-311. doi: 10.1111/1475-6773.12613
Peterson, L., & Hyer, K. (2016). Shifting to Medicaid-Managed Long-Term Care. Journal Of Applied Gerontology , 35 (10), 1077-1094. doi: 10.1177/0733464815570668
Watts, V. (2014). Florida Brings Integrated Care to Medicaid Beneficiaries. Psychiatric News , 49 (15), 1-1. doi: 10.1176/appi.pn.2014.8a18
