The Welfare Reform Model for Medicaid

Critics predicted disaster for block grants in 1996. They were proven wrong.

One of the greatest bipartisan policy successes of recent decades was welfare reform, enacted into law by a Republican Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996. As House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) has proposed in his budget, those reforms should now be extended to Medicaid and beyond.

The 1996 reform of the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) returned the share of federal spending on the program to each state in the form of a block grant. The grant was to be used for new welfare programs redesigned by each state based on ...

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