Yes. Having both Medicare and Medicaid at the same time is common and has a name: dual eligibility. Each program covers different things, and together they can significantly reduce your out-of-pocket costs.
People who qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid are often called dual eligible beneficiaries. Medicare is a federal program based primarily on age or disability. Medicaid is a joint federal and state program based on income and assets. Qualifying for one does not disqualify you from the other. When you have both, Medicare is typically the primary payer, meaning it pays first. Medicaid then acts as secondary coverage and can help pay costs that Medicare doesn't fully cover, like premiums, copays, and deductibles, depending on your specific Medicaid eligibility level. There are also special Medicare Advantage plans designed specifically for people with both coverages. These are called D-SNPs, which stands for Dual Eligible Special Needs Plans. They coordinate your Medicare and Medicaid benefits in one plan and often include extra benefits like dental, vision, transportation, and over-the-counter allowances. Not every state's Medicaid program works the same way, so the exact benefits and coordination rules depend on where you live. It is worth getting help from a counselor or licensed agent to make sure your coverage is set up correctly.
In Utah, Medicaid is administered by the Utah Department of Health and Human Services. Dual eligible residents may have access to D-SNP plans from carriers like UHC, Humana, Molina, and Devoted Health, depending on the county. The Utah ADRC network can help you understand what you qualify for and how your benefits work together, at no cost to you.
For you, this means that if your income is limited, having both programs can work together to cover a much larger share of your health care costs than either program would alone.
Our Commitment to Reliable Medicare Information
At Resting Sycamore Advisors, we work to provide accurate, current, and trustworthy information about Medicare Advantage, Medicare Part D, and Special Needs Plans.
To do that, we use data published by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which is the official source for Medicare plan and enrollment information.
Our Medicare plan pages and comparison tools are powered by CMS datasets, including:
When possible, we link to the original CMS resources so you can review the source material directly.
We follow the CMS release schedule and update our website as new data becomes available.
We load new plan year Landscape and PBP files before the Medicare Annual Enrollment Period (October 15 through December 7). We also monitor CMS.gov for updates or revisions and refresh our content when needed.
We update enrollment and performance data as CMS publishes revised files, which are typically released monthly or quarterly.
We routinely monitor CMS announcements for corrections, reissued files, or other changes and update our pages accordingly.
Each plan page includes a Last Accessed date so visitors can see when the source information was most recently reviewed.
CMS data can be difficult to read in raw form. To make it easier to use, we format and organize the data for clarity.
This includes:
All data values come from CMS. We do not change the underlying values beyond formatting, organization, and presentation.
We keep internal records of the CMS dataset versions used on our site.
If CMS issues corrected or revised files, we update our website to reflect the latest available version.
Please keep the following in mind:
For personalized Medicare assistance, please use these official resources: