It was designed to make private medical care available to people who cannot afford it. States receive federal money and as long as their procedures are reasonable, they can decide their own ways of determining an applicant's income and whether they qualify for aid(Wests 310). In 1996, after the abolition of the AFDC program, anyone who received AFDC automatically qualified for Medicaid. The 1996 law does deny Medicaid to immigrants however and refugees can only receive it after living in the United States for five years(Dunbar 174). .
The Food Stamp Act of 1964 was probably the most significant food plan in the United States. Needy individuals can obtain food stamps, coupons that can be exchanged like money at stores. The federal government pays for the amount of benefits received, and the states pay the costs of determining eligibility and distributing the stamps. The value of the food stamp allotment that state agencies are authorized to issue is reduced to an amount equal to thirty percent of the household income(Leiby 1978, 223).
By the 1960's, criticism began to grow that these programs had made people too dependent on the government to live, and this is where the debate begins. Many people felt that by giving people welfare it discourages them from leaving the program and seeking employment. Others think differently. They feel that, while the system is not perfect, children are the prime beneficiaries of welfare assistance, and to cut adults from welfare would not only hurt them, but their children as well.
On Mother's Day in 1968, more than 5,000 black women marched through Washington, D.C., to mark the opening of the Poor People's Campaign, a mass protest against the problems that the poor people in .
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America had. The National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) coordinated this event to try and repeal amendments to the 1967 Social Security Act, which raised eligibility standards and reduced welfare benefits to low-income mothers and their children(Valk 2000, 1).
