The most common objection to adding a medically tailored meal benefit is how to pay for it. The answer, in most markets, is that the funding mechanism already exists.

When health plan leaders engage with the Food is Medicine conversation, the clinical argument usually lands quickly. The evidence that medically tailored meals reduce readmissions, support chronic disease management, and improve member experience is well established and growing stronger every year.

The question that follows is almost always the same: where does the funding come from?

It is the right question. And the answer, in most Medicaid and Medicare Advantage markets, is more straightforward than most plans expect. The funding pathways for medically tailored meal programs exist today, in active use, across multiple states and plan types. Plans that are waiting for new legislation or new budget lines before moving forward may already be sitting on the authority they need.

According to the 2026 Advances in the Food Is Medicine Field Annual Report from Health Care by Food (HCxF), an American Heart Association initiative, the evidence base for food is medicine interventions continues to grow significantly. A 2025 study estimated that a national rollout of medically tailored meals for people with diet-related diseases could avert over 2.61 million hospitalizations and save $23.7 billion across all payers per year. Source: healthcarexfood.org

The Four Primary Funding Pathways Active Today

Medicaid 1115 Demonstration Waivers

Section 1115 of the Social Security Act gives states the authority to waive standard Medicaid requirements and test new approaches to coverage and delivery. Several states have used this authority to fund medically tailored meals as a covered service for Medicaid members with specific chronic conditions or post-discharge needs. California’s CalAIM initiative is among the most prominent examples, authorizing medically tailored meals as an Enhanced Care Management and Community Supports service for high-need members. Other states have followed with their own waiver language authorizing nutrition support as a covered Medicaid benefit.

Who can use it: Medicaid MCOs operating in states with active 1115 waivers that authorize nutrition services. Plans in states without current waiver authority can advocate for inclusion in the next waiver cycle.

Medicaid Community Supports and Alternative Payment Models

Beyond 1115 waivers, many state Medicaid programs have authorized medically tailored meals through Community Supports frameworks, often within managed long-term services and supports (MLTSS) structures. These frameworks allow plans to fund non-traditional services, including home-delivered meals, as part of a member’s care plan when the service is expected to reduce higher-cost utilization. Plans operating under value-based payment arrangements have particular flexibility here, as the investment in nutrition support can be justified directly against the utilization it is designed to prevent.

Who can use it: Medicaid MCOs with MLTSS contracts or value-based payment arrangements. Plans in Community Supports states including Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Ohio, and others with active MLTSS programs.

Medicare Advantage Supplemental Benefits

CMS has significantly expanded Medicare Advantage plan flexibility to offer supplemental benefits for chronically ill members under the Special Supplemental Benefits for the Chronically Ill (SSBCI) authority. This allows MA plans to cover medically tailored meals and other nutrition services for members with qualifying chronic conditions, without requiring those benefits to be offered uniformly to all enrollees. Plans can target the benefit precisely to the members who need it most, making the investment more efficient and the return more measurable. As Medicare Advantage competition has intensified, meaningful supplemental benefits have become a significant differentiator in member acquisition and retention.

Who can use it: All Medicare Advantage plans with SSBCI authority, which CMS has expanded in recent plan years. Plans serving members with heart failure, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, or other qualifying conditions are best positioned to activate this benefit.

Dual-Eligible and D-SNP Program Structures

For plans serving dual-eligible members, who qualify for both Medicaid and Medicare, the funding equation has additional flexibility. Dual-eligible Special Needs Plans (D-SNPs) can draw on both Medicare Advantage supplemental benefit authority and Medicaid Community Supports funding to build more comprehensive nutrition support programs than either funding stream allows alone. The coordination requirement for D-SNPs, which must integrate Medicare and Medicaid benefits into a unified care plan, actually creates a structural opening for medically tailored meals as a coordinating intervention that touches both funding streams.

Who can use it: D-SNP and Medicare-Medicaid Plan (MMP) operators. Plans with integrated care management across Medicare and Medicaid benefits are the best positioned to use both funding streams simultaneously.

The plans waiting for new legislation before moving on Food is Medicine may already have the authority they need. The funding pathways are active, tested, and in use today.

What the Policy Landscape Looks Like Right Now

The Food is Medicine field has moved from advocacy to implementation faster than most managed care observers expected. The 2022 White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health elevated medically tailored meals to a federal policy priority. CMS guidance has expanded the definition of fundable health-related social needs interventions to include nutrition support. State Medicaid agencies have used 1115 waiver authority with increasing specificity to authorize medically tailored meals as a covered Community Support.

According to the 2026 Advances in the Food Is Medicine Field Annual Report from Health Care by Food, an American Heart Association initiative, the field is experiencing rapid growth in both the evidence base and the implementation of food is medicine programs across health systems and payer organizations. The report highlights a growing body of evidence showing how nutrition interventions can improve health outcomes and help reduce healthcare utilization.

That momentum has a practical implication for health plans: the plans that activate Food is Medicine programs now are building the operational experience, the member relationships, and the quality metric performance that will compound over time. The plans that wait are not preserving optionality. They are falling behind on a quality and cost-management strategy that their peers are already executing.

The plans activating Food is Medicine now are building compounding advantages in quality performance, member trust, and operational experience that will be difficult to close later.

How GA Foods Helps Plans Navigate the Funding Pathway

GA Foods has been operating medically tailored meal programs within Medicaid, Medicare Advantage, and LTSS funding structures for over 50 years. That means we have worked through the funding navigation, the authorization processes, and the reporting requirements that each pathway requires, in real programs, with real health plans, across multiple states.

When a health plan comes to GA Foods exploring a post-discharge meal program or a broader medically tailored nutrition benefit, one of the first conversations is always about funding. We help plans identify which pathways are active in their state, what the authorization and documentation requirements look like for each, and how to structure the program so that it fits within the funding framework cleanly.

That operational experience is not theoretical. It is embedded in how we build and launch programs, and it shortens the time between a plan’s decision to move forward and the first meal at a member’s door.

If your plan is ready to explore how to fund and activate a medically tailored meal program, we would like to be the first call you make.

Sources: Health Care by Food (HCxF) / American Heart Association, Advances in the Food Is Medicine Field Annual Report 2026 (healthcarexfood.org). AMPL Institute at Community Servings, “A View of the Field: The Landscape of Medically Tailored Nutrition in 2026,” May 2026. All policy references reflect publicly available CMS guidance and state Medicaid waiver documentation.