Medicare: A PrimerMedicare and Medicaid currently provide health coverage to approximately ninety million Americans. To help explain the two programs, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation has issued a new Medicare primer and an updated version of its Medicaid primer. Medicare: A Primer (37 pages, PDF), explains which benefits are covered and how much people are asked to pay, as well as the program's overall costs and future financing challenges. The updated Medicaid: A Primer (33 pages, PDF) provides an overview of the leading source of the nation's long-term healthcare financing and examines the structure of the program, whom it covers, the services it provides, and its spending.
