Final answer:
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 introduced per-visit and agency-specific limits on home health spending, marking a significant shift in the way health care and welfare programs were funded and managed in the United States.
Step-by-step explanation:
To reduce the growth in home health, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 imposed lower per-visit limits and introduced a new agency-specific, aggregate per-beneficiary limit. This limit was based on the agencies' federal fiscal year spending in 1994. The Act is a part of a series of health-related legislative reforms that were intended to control the rising costs of healthcare, which also included efforts such as the transformation of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) into the block-granted Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. In contrast to the AFDC, the TANF block grant capped annual federal funding and granted states lump sums to manage their welfare programs independently.