Home-Care Use and Expenditures Among Medicaid Beneficiaries with AIDS

This article compares the use and cost of home-care services among traditional Medicaid recipients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and among participants in a statewide Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)/AIDS-specific home and community-based Medicaid waiver program in New Jersey, using Medicaid claims and AIDS surveillance data. Waiver program participation appears to mitigate racial and risk group differences in the probability of home-care use. However, the program's successes are confined to its enrollees of which subgroups of the AIDS population are underrepresented. Our findings suggest the need to expand access to home-care programs to racial minorities and injection drug users (IDUs) with HIV/AIDS.