ABSTRACT
The lack of a strong federal role in the Kerr-Mills legislation was not merely a reaction against federal health insurance proposals. It was, rather, a reflection of a general groping for a federal role in programs that were federally subsidized but not federally organized or directed. The period of rapid federal legislative activity between 1963 and 1966 provided, in some respects, a counter to the previous federal role in health, in other respects, some similarities. At the federal level, Kerr-Mills was clearly no solution to the national problem of buying health care for the elderly. By providing more generous federal matching funds to the states and by extending the principle of "medical indigency" to all welfare categories, Medicaid offered to the states the opportunity not only for vast expansion in public assistance medical services but also for a rethinking of their goals and philosophy.
