Unlike Medicare, the Medicaid program was almost an afterthought. There had been no national debate about what to include or how to design Medicaid as had happened with Medicare. Medicaid was added to the Medicare legislation late in the process, partly as a compromise for those who wanted to add assistance for low-income elderly to Medicare. Medicaid was created from the Kerr-Mills program, and it kept many of the aspects of Kerr-Mills, but added new categories of eligible beneficiaries, like the blind, the disabled, and families with children. Because Medicaid was to be a state-run program and no one had thought through what the federal government wanted to accomplish, Medicaid was just turned over to the states to develop and administer as they saw fit, and the states proceeded to create 50+ varieties of Medicaid.