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The Medicaid Mandates of the 1980s: An Intergovernmental Perspective
Author(s) -
Johnston Jocelyn M.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
public budgeting and finance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.694
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1540-5850
pISSN - 0275-1100
DOI - 10.1111/1540-5850.01090
Subject(s) - medicaid , equity (law) , state (computer science) , discretion , business , public administration , government (linguistics) , perspective (graphical) , health care , political science , public economics , economics , law , linguistics , philosophy , algorithm , artificial intelligence , computer science
Medicaid, the health care program for the poor, has undergone significant changes in the last fifteen years. Many of those changes relate to the intergovernmental nature of the program. Medicaid is jointly operated, with the federal and state governments sharing program costs. Despite a set of program guidelines dictated by the federal government, states have traditionally had substantial latitude in Medicaid decisions. However, a series of developments in the 1980s led to increasing constraints on state Medicaid discretion, including federal mandates to expand Medicaid coverage. This article examines the inception and effectiveness of the Medicaid mandates from the perspective of interstate equity of health care services for poor families.