Katie Beckett Medicaid waiver

Prior to the Katie Beckett waiver, if a child with significant medical needs received treatment at home, the child's income would be deemed to include the parents' entire financial resources for the purposes of determining Medicaid eligibility.

The effect was that many families, unable to afford home treatment, kept their children in costly hospital settings in order to meet the Medicaid 30-day requirement.

Katie Beckett waivers allow Medicaid to cover medical services for children in the home, regardless of the parents' income, in cases where home-based treatment will cost less than or the same as treatment in a hospital.

[1] The waiver is named for Katie Beckett, a three-year-old who was hospitalized from infancy so she could receive ventilator assistance after a viral encephalitis infection left her partially paralyzed in a way that affected her ability to breathe.

The brain inflammation put her in a coma and left her partially paralyzed in a way that affected her ability to breathe and with grand mal seizures.