Welfare Reform Act

There are both positive and negative implications of the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 on Medicaid. A negative implication is that even though most of the people on welfare and Medicaid are able-bodied people who could be self-sufficient if they had to be, Medicaid and other social programs reinforce these people’s laziness and unwillingness to contribute to society. Welfare reform has only decreased handouts marginally. A positive implication is that some effort was made to reduce the number of people who were dependent upon the state. The genetic implications of the welfare system and Medicaid in particular are terrifying to contemplate. The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 was a response to overwhelming public criticism by the working class on the entitlement programs which allowed non-contributing members of society easy and complete access to “FREE” health care, “FREE” housing and “FREE” education that a working person could never get. The working class continues to seethe in anger that our hard earned money is stolen by a corrupt government and redistributed to people too lazy to get a job, or to people who are not US citizens and who do not pay into the system. The Welfare Reform Act did NOT cause existing Medicaid beneficiaries to lose necessary coverage. We can see now that the Welfare Reform Act was only marginally effective in reducing welfare fraud and increasing personal responsibility. Sadly, the Welfare Reform Act has not been successful in meeting its intended goals.
Since the system was already and still is giving benefits to those who did not and do not even need them, the system was already, and still is broken. I contend that no one lost any necessary coverage after this bill passed. Welfare reform did good things to caseloads as one source points out,
“As noted, welfare caseloads are down since the early 1990s, with an increasingly rapid decrease since the passage of welfare reform. Medicaid data reporting lags behind welfare reporting, making

Cited: Did welfare reform work? Retrieved 11/9/12 from http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/08/did-welfare-reform-work/244038/ Welfare Reform and Its Impact on Medicaid: An Update Retrieved 11/9/12 from http://www.nhpf.org/library/issue-briefs/IB732_WelfRef&Mcaid_2-26-99.pdf