ABSTRACT
The 1967 Amendments, and later the 1969 Amendments, brought some comfort to the states. But, by 1968, state Medicaid programs had developed their own momentum, and their own problems. New Mexico, which did not even cover the "medically indigent," was faced with a legislature which refused to allocate enough funds to pay even for a barebones Medicaid program. Some sense of the impact of the 1967 Amendments in the states may be gleaned from the reactions in California and New York. The exigencies of balancing state budgets to cope with the combined impact of the 1967 Amendments and continued increases in medical costs provided the major theme in Medicaid retrenchments in 1968 and 1969. Initial estimates stated that during fiscal 1967 the Medicaid program would raise public assistance costs by $36 million; this was to be accompanied, as a bonus, by expected increased federal funding of $114 million and a decreased state and local share of $78 million.
