We; Fare Reform

Running Header: Welfare Reform

Welfare Reform

Welfare Reform

Summer of 1996 President Clinton had signed a bill the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act this Act was designed to transform the welfare system. According to Valerius, Bayes, Newby & Seggern (2008), “The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (P.L. 104-193), commonly known as the Welfare Reform Act replaced the AFDC program with TANF.” This Act provided assistance to needy families with children, although the Act required AFDC to be limited to five years. The welfare reform act also provided many states with choices on how to administer Medicaid and determine participant’s eligibility for coverage. The Welfare Reform Act gives those that are receiving AFDC Medicaid. Before the Act welfare claimants take Welfare as a right not as a privilege. The welfare system was created to help men and woman and children that needed financial assistance and medical assistance. There was a lot of controversy between the Conservatives announcing that the federal welfare system is a plot to threat American Values. AFDC discussions tended to accuse AFDC of breaking families’ apart, foster parenting on the rise, and stimulating dependency, however the evidence to this was sometimes ambiguous. The hope of welfare was to move people from dependency to self reliance so that they may get the help they need but also be able to work and find self structure. Medicaid was such as big controversy as a part of the new Act believing that it would be linked to AFDC allowing families to remain on Medicaid while receiving TANF and those that were not on AFDC were still eligible to receive Medicaid only if they income met a certain criteria to qualify. “Thus some states are required to maintain an eligibility floor for Medicaid based on old...