In 1980, largely in response to growing concern over human rights abuses in the asylum system, Jimmy Carter passed the Mental Health Systems Act, which created direct federal funding for community based mental healthcare centers. When Reagan came into office he repealed everything with his sweeping Omnibus bill. He turned the funding into state block grants, which many states rejected, much like during the Obama era Medicaid expansion. The result is what people are referring to when they say that we shut down the mental hospitals and moved them into prisons.