New Yorkers are eligible for Medicaid if their incomes are below the program’s limits and they meet requirements related to assets, residency, and immigration status. Medicaid’s income limits range from 100 percent of the federal poverty level for childless adults to 200 percent of poverty for pregnant women and infants. (The federal poverty level for 2009 is $10,830 for an individual and $18,310 for a family of three.) Children in families whose income exceeds Medicaid limits are eligible for subsidized coverage under New York’s Child Health Insurance Program (CHIP) at family incomes up to 400 percent of the poverty level.

As of March 2009, 4.4 million New Yorkers were enrolled in Medicaid, including:

• 1.7 million children who are not disabled (not including 0.4 million enrolled in CHIP)
• 1.6 million adults who are neither elderly nor disabled
• 1.1 million individuals who are elderly, disabled, or both

Of New York's 2.5 million uninsured residents, an estimated 750 thousand adults are eligible for Medicaid, and 250,000 children are eligible for Medicaid or CHIP. Some have never enrolled, and others have lost coverage despite remaining eligible. Complex application, enrollment, and renewal procedures—which do not use modern information technology effectively—are major reasons Medicaid fails to reach a significant number of eligible New Yorkers. Because the program typically enrolls the sickest and most costly subsets of those eligible for it, coverage for Medicaid-eligible New Yorkers who are currently not insured would likely result in larger increases in enrollment numbers than in spending.