ABSTRACT
As the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) epidemic progresses and attention rightfully begins to turn as much to providing services to those infected as to preventing further infection, questions of economics and financing come to the forefront. Most people with AIDS are poor. If they are not poor to begin with, they become poor as the combination of disability and discrimination removes them from the labor market and the costs of care exhaust their assets. Almost from the inception of Medicaid, states have worked avidly to transfer as many as possible of the costs associated with care of dependent populations from traditional funding sources to Medicaid, and thus to a federal matching share of 50 percent. Dependence on Medicaid also slows down service innovation, a result of the syllogism that Medicaid will only pay for Medicaid-covered services. Between the Great Depression and 1981, the primary source of financing for the construction of low-income housing was the federal government.
