Editorial policy
By the MedicaidCalc Editorial Team · Updated
Medicaid figures decide whether people apply for coverage, so this site treats a wrong number as the worst possible defect. These are the rules the MedicaidCalc Editorial Team follows.
What counts as a source
- Primary: federal statutes and regulations, Federal Register notices (poverty guidelines, the SSI rate, the 2026 community-engagement rule), and each state Medicaid agency’s own manuals, charts and director letters.
- Federal compilations: MACPAC’s MACStats data book, compiled by a congressional commission from CMS-approved state plans, is the baseline for all 51 jurisdictions.
- Cross-checks only: KFF’s annual 50-state survey. When it and MACPAC disagree, the state agency’s document decides.
- Never: other eligibility calculators, aggregator blogs or AI answers. If a state agency blocks automated access, we read its document through a dated Internet Archive copy of the official URL and say so on the sources page (Kansas is the current example).
Verification and refresh cadence
- Every January: add the new HHS poverty guidelines within a week of publication, and note each state’s switch date as agencies publish it.
- Every October–November: add the next year’s SSI rate from SSA’s cost-of-living notice.
- Every spring: compare all 51 jurisdictions against the newest MACPAC and KFF releases and re-read the agency charts for the non-expansion states.
- On any reported change: read the state’s document, update the figure, and change the page’s verified date.
The build enforces the calendar: an automated test fails 45 days before the poverty guidelines or the SSI rate run out without a verified replacement, and after the deadline the calculator asks visitors for the official figure rather than presenting a stale one as current.
Dates on pages
The “verified” or “updated” date on a page is the date its figures were last checked against the sources, not the date the site was rebuilt. The sitemap uses the same date.
Corrections
Anyone can report a problem through the corrections form. Each report is logged with the page it concerns. We check it against the primary source; if the site is wrong we fix the figure, update the verified date, and keep the correction in the repository history. We do not edit silently around an error.
Use of AI and automation
AI tools help with this site: they draft code and text, fetch and extract figures from documents, and run the tests. They are never the source of a number. Every figure on the site was read in the cited primary document by the person or process verifying it, and the arithmetic is repeated by hand in the unit tests. Automated checks (duplicate-page detection, metadata checks, a browser test of every state page) run before anything is published.
Independence
No advertiser, insurer, broker or agency reviews or pays for content. We do not publish named authors or credentials we cannot stand behind; the publisher is the MedicaidCalc Editorial Team.