Virginia, like any other states of United States is home to many people who belong to low income group. These people due to their low income often find it difficult to incur the cost of huge medical treatment. Some of them cannot even bear most of their medical expenses. But as everyone has the right to receive medical treatment the governments at the state and federal level pays the medical expenses for these people. They do it through a social welfare program which is known as Medicaid program. The Medicaid program is a need based program that pays for the medical expenses for a certain income group when they need it.

Though Virginia Medicare and Virginia Medicaid are similar sounding programs there is a huge difference between them. Medicare health insurance program is one of the social insurance programs that is administered as well as funded by the government of United States. No State government is involved in the funding of this program. On the other hand Medicaid program is administered and funded by state-federal governments. Half of the fund is provided by federal government and the state government of Virginia pays for the other half. The program is administered by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services.