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Doctors Say Food Stamp Cuts Could Cause Higher Healthcare Costs
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Lauran Neergaard writes at the Christian Science Monitor that doctors are warning that if Congress cuts food stamps, the federal government could be socked with bigger health bills because over time the poor wind up seeking treatment in doctors' offices or hospitals as a result. 'If you're interested in saving health care costs, the dumbest thing you can do is cut nutrition,' says Dr. Deborah Frank of Boston Medical Center, who founded the Children's HealthWatch pediatric research institute. 'People don't make the hunger-health connection.' Food stamps feed 1 in 7 Americans and cost almost $80 billion a year, twice what it cost five years ago. The doctors' lobbying effort comes as Congress is working on a compromise farm bill that's certain to include food stamp cuts. Republicans want heftier reductions than do Democrats in yet another partisan battle over the government's role in helping poor Americans. Conservatives say the program spiraled out of control as the economy struggled and the costs are not sustainable. However research from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The Pew Charitable Trusts estimated that a cut of $2 billion a year in food stamps could trigger in an increase of $15 billion in medical costs (PDF) for over the next decade. Other research shows children from food-insecure families are 30 percent more likely to have been hospitalized for a range of illnesses. 'Food is medicine,' says Massachusetts Representative Jim McGovern, who has led the Democrats' defense of the food stamp program. 'Critics focus almost exclusively on how much we spend, and I wish they understood that if we did this better, we could save a lot more money in health care costs.'"
$2 billion/year x 10 years = $20 billion > $15 billion
I'm pretty tolerant of articles for slashdot, but this seems really far off subject.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Growing up, I always thought that the goal of civilisation was to alleviate suffering.
On economic grounds, it will cost net $500 million more per year (($2B x 10 - $15B) / 10) to keep people in adequate nutrition. By US budget standards, that's pissing in the ocean.
On humanitarian grounds, there is no question that the money must be allocated.
If society's job isn't to improve the lot of humanity, it has no purpose. If we look only at ourselves, we are no better than apes.
Your multi-billion dollar business go under? Get a huge bailout from taxpayers.
Have five kids with four different fathers? Taxpayers will cover your kids' entire upbringing.
Your bank cause a market crash? Taxpayers are forced to cover your corruption.
Stopped looking for work for a few years? Here's free food and housing courtesy of taxpayers.
"Food stamps feed 1 in 7 Americans and cost almost $80 billion a year, twice what it cost five years ago".
So we've doubled the amount of money we spend on food stamps and we have record numbers of Americans that rely on the government for their food. I wonder which way the vote. When you don't work and get your income from the government (who gets its money from taxpayers) then there is no incentive to look for work. Have some kids, collect some checks, and don't ever look for work. And with all the unemployment and record food stamp usage both parties are now talking about letting millions of illegal immigrants into this country and legalizing the ones that are already here.
And of course cue the screaming. "Corporate welfare is worse than individual welfare". They are both a major drain on society. And individual welfare is now a record drain. There's no incentive to succeed anymore. There's no incentive for personal responsibility. You can have six kids out of wedlock and be rewarded by the state with free food and housing. This happens on such a massive scale that we lose billions annually creating a system that encourages broken homes, unwanted children, and bastard children with no future as productive citizens.
Look. Get off of your moral high horse and look at the fundamental fact that shitty food costs less. You can buy 4 two litre bottles of soda for the cost of a gallon of milk. You can buy 4 boxes of lil debbie snack cakes for the cost of a lb of chicken. You CAN NOT expect people to live on rice and lettuce because "they are poor, so they don't deserve any better food". At this point, who cares what they eat, so long as they can eat. Once everyone is fed, then we will worry about what they eat. Even then, the solution is education, not persecution
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
I currently get food stamps and they provide the entirety of my food budget. I am well educated and know my way around a kitchen so I can keep myself fit and healthy for well under the $187/month I get. But if I wanted, I could buy candy, coke, and chips and try and live off of that. If you are on food stamps you can NOT simply rely on prepackaged heat and serve meals - you'll either run out of money or not get the nutrition you need. You need to focus on the basics: beans, rice, lentils, fresh fruits and veggies, and only occasionally some raw chicken (forget your love affair with beef, its too expensive). In my view, the problem is with education rather than money. Teach people how to cook and what to cook and they'll be healthy. Barrage them with ads for canned raviolis and Doritos and you'll get people who think that cooking simply involves heating things up. The food stamp program needs to be revised so that you are prohibited from purchasing junk foods just like alcohol or cigarettes can't be bought. In addition to restricting crap foods, allow people to purchase things like vitamins, toothpaste, and toilet paper with their food stamps. Being on food stamps is not fun, but for many people it is not a choice (the elderly or disabled) so lets make the program actually work for the benefit of those who receive the money.
Almost any political position is believed by its followers to be something that affects people's lives, and thus can be spun as affecting health care costs. It's just as easy to do it for the other side. Just take the standard political argument and tack on "so it affects health care costs". For instance, conservatives say that the costs hurt the economy. Well, in a worse economy, people have more health care problems (for hopefully obvious reasons). So food stamps increase health care costs because although they provide food (reducing health care costs), they also harm the economy by a marginal amount (increasing health care costs). If the latter effect is larger, then food stamps are a health care disaster.
And it's unlikely that the study which claimed that cutting food stamps increases health care costs by 15 billion took into account the possibility that paying for food stamps hurts the economy and health care costs are larger in a worse economy.
I can claim that gun control decreases health care costs (because it reduces gun violence and victims of violence use hospitals--this has been claimed for real). I could on the other hand claim that looser gun laws decrease health care costs (because people can use guns to protect themselves from criminals and people hurt by criminals use hospitals). Maybe we need stronger drug laws (stoned people don't take care of themselves very well) or weaker drug laws (the drug war sends people to prison where health is bad and they can't earn a living when they get out since they have an arrest record, making them poor, and so more likely to have high health care costs).
How about arguing that censoring video games reduces health care costs? (fewer teens will become criminals if you censor games; less crime means fewer people sent to hospitals by criminals). It's all about disguising a political position as a nonpartisan one, not about health care.
Healthy food costs less than shitty food. Some examples:
A gallon of water costs less than a gallon of soda.
A pound of frozen vegetables costs less than a pound candy.
A pound of chicken costs less than a pound of hamburger.
A dozen eggs costs less than a dozen candy eggs.
A pound of potatoes costs less than a pound of potato-chips.
This is all anecdotal, of course.
Uneducated single mothers living in slums with 5+ kids should just get a better job. Advice from a white guy sitting in a suburban home in front of his expensive computer.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
You also need to count:
1) Lost worker productivity costs to the economy (most of these people have jobs)
2) Increased welfare costs (these new sick people are the age of parents and caretakers)
3) Increased long term health care costs (these sick people will not disappear in 10 years)
The costs of creating a huge underclass has serious economic implications. Ask any teacher and they will tell you that the kids they have trouble teaching are the ones who don't get enough food to eat, and those who don't live in safe neighborhoods. You know, the ones you're too afraid of driving through.
The fact that there are hungry children in this country should make you feel ashamed about gleefully cutting programs that feed the poor. And you don't even have the math partially right, nor do you seem understand the basic economic facts that operate in all known current economic theory (and common sense): taking care of a population's health (including nutrition) through a public service is much cheaper for societies than only guaranteeing emergency services, unless we start euthanizing the poor in hospital parking lots. That's how two dozen other countries provide 100% coverage for at least half the cost per capita with similar health outcomes.
These new puppet conservatives do not have common sense or common decency, and further, they lack a prime signifier of adulthood: the ability to put the needs of others above their own wants. Why you would want to support them in their quest to keep tax cuts for people who don't need them while gutting basic services to the next generation of Americans is quite mysterious, unless being a parasite of the aristocratic class is something that appeals to you.
And let's face it, that's all the Republican party is. As proof of this fact, name one Republican policy that benefits the poor to the detriment of the rich. Just one.
Christ may have died for the poor, but the GOP fights for the wealthy. It's an odd reality for the party of God, isn't it?
Apparently your idea is theft, not freedom. What will it do to everybody's health once the economy is destroyed? I can give an estimate but it really doesn't matter. What will it do to the society when everybody is poor because there is no economy left because the rule of law, the governance process no longer applies?
Food stamps, welfare state, military industrial complex, none of it is compatible with the rule of law, with good governance, morality or good economics. These are antithesis to each other. People must not be taught to expect theft to have their lives subsidised.
You can't handle the truth.
How about when the girl gets on welfare with one kid you tell her "Here's the pill, here's where you can get condoms. If you get pregnant again you will be dropped from welfare and charged with child endangerment."
Why should people that are themselves dependents have the right to create more dependents with no consequences?
Somekind of wage at all is a great idea. We should re-invent the company store. Ban all labor unions, Dispatch with the EPA and OSHA. Dismiss minimum wages. Fuck, while where at it lets bring back slavery, because you know their masters had to take care of their slaves too.
Or you could wake the fuck up and read American history from 1850 to current and learn why we have many of the labor and wage laws we do. You have a wonderfully deluded idea that the past was some great and epic time where things where fair and anyone that wanted to work was showered with good wages. It is unfortunate that reality disagrees with you.
I agree it's pathetic, but you should really do more than simply blame them for it. These types of behaviors are ways people have of coping with a life situation they aren't happy with. While it would be better for them work to change their life situation to something better, if they were going to do that they probably would have done it by now. The bad thing about food stamps is they encourage this kind of coping over healthier behaviors.
But if you are going to take the tough love approach and cut off their food stamps, which I agree must be done, you do still need to make sure there's love in that action. If you treat them like you hate or distain them, you are going to push them further down the path they're already on.
The average amount received by those "1 in 7" Americans is only $133. That's not enough to get by on. It's quite obvious that many people simply see SNAP as a viable source of "income", just like hunting for all the deductibles you can to reduce your tax rate.
Back when I was in high school I worked at a grocery store (to save up for my first computer - I bought a used Amiga 1000 for $700 - ahh the good old days). This was around 20 years ago, back when food stamps were actual paper things just like physical money. They were a MAJOR pain in the butt for cashiers to deal with, because of all the rules involved. They had to be removed from the booklet by the cashier - if they were loose individual "bills" then they weren't to be accepted. Since they were all new, they stuck together like crazy and were slow and annoying to deal with. Since cashiers couldn't give back food stamps as change, you had to give back cash. However, you could only give back up to a very small amount in cash (I'm pretty sure it was less than $5). Thus the shopper had to try and guesstimate, based on the denominations they had, what food to get to come within $5 of the increment they could buy (again, based on what specific denominations they had remaining in their booklets). In other words, it was extremely obvious to everyone around, including all the people in line behind you, that you were using food stamps because of the tedious and slow payment process.
Part of the reason they were a logistical pain in the butt is because they were intended as a supplement - you're getting $65 in groceries? Slap down a couple food stamp twenties and then pay the rest in cash. However people wouldn't use them that way - most would try and make their entire purchase in food stamps.
Now, it's just a card you swipe like any other, and I don't guess the cashier even knows you used an EBT card instead of a debit card. So I think since the stigma of using food stamps is now virtually gone (by simple fact that you can use them stealthily), many Americans see them as a perk or entitlement that they need to make use of, again, almost like trying to reduce their income tax by saving receipts for deductibles, etc.
Better known as 318230.
Uneducated single mothers living in slums with 5+ kids should just get a better job. Advice from a white guy sitting in a suburban home in front of his expensive computer.
Damn you're good. I believe the niveau of armerican sarcasm/irony has finally reached a new hight(assuming you're american....)
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> How about when the girl gets on welfare with one kid you tell her "Here's the pill, here's where you can get condoms.
That's fine in theory. Except for the fact that the people that want to gut Food Stamps also want to destroy sex education and any form of family planning. The openly attack the private organizations that provide birth control pills and condoms to would be welfare mothers.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
How is sex education and family planning going to have any effect? If the financial incentive is still there, then they're going to continue to have kids. Take away the free shit first and then we can tell them what happens 9 months after you stick a penis in a vagina.
That's fine in theory. Except for the fact that the people that want to gut Food Stamps also want to destroy sex education and any form of family planning.
To be fair, there's also that not-having-sex-until-marriage part, not to mention promoting fatherhood (as opposed to just being a "baby daddy") but please - feel free to overgeneralize. ;)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I see you're believing the lie. Good job!
You know, you might have a point except for one word: Detroit.
No republican has held any kind of office in that city since the 1950's. The democrats set the policies, and ran the government there. They ballooned the welfare state there to unimaginable proportions. They have no one to blame but themselves.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I'm not saying the fat guy you watched was right, but OTOH when I was on food stamps my actual job involved burning 4,000 calories a day as a loader at a Home Depot. My food-stamp budget was $117 a month. I had no car. I had no place to store food in my room. This meant the way middle class people save money (ie: making nutritious lunch at home and bringing it to work) was impossible. Therefore was spending $6-$7 every workday on lunch at Wendy's. Which meant the $117 had to buy the other 1,000-1,500 calories a day or I'd fucking die of starvation. That meant pop and candy. With all this I still ended up losing like 40-50 pounds. My teeth are shit, but I'm alive. And if I'd tried to eat like a middle class person I wouldn't be.
My current situation is somewhat better monetarily, but the things middle class people assume I have when they give me food advice still don't apply. My fridge is about 1.5 cubic feet. This is enough room for a jug of milk and an apple. I do not have a stove. I do not have a car, so food that is at all hard to get (ie: isn't at every single Walmart) will not happen. Since taking multiple grocery bags on the bus is a huge pain in the ass (and my commute alone is already 2 hours on the bus system every single fucking day) multiple grocery trips every month to said Walmart will not happen.
Being poor the options open to you are simply so different that the strategies a middle class person develops for dealing with the world simply don't apply. Take the simple advice from the eater's manifesto: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." Rules 1 and 3 are useless to me because I can't afford 'food,' and I can't store vegetables. You might as well give me three sure-fire rules for blowing up an Imperial Star Destroyer using only a Bat'leth.
And yes, I'm aware that one of those is Star Wars and the other is Star Trek.
It's not exclusively a poor problem. However, I don't think it is unreasonable that someone that can't afford to take care of themselves be asked to not increase their expenses by their own choice while taking hand outs.
A pointless and moralistic stance.
Sure, but that's beside the point.
Opposition to contraceptives and proper sex education is purely malicious.
Let me make sure I understand this.
Congress is waging war over $2 billion in budget cuts. In a budget that is around $3 trillion. The deficit alone is $680 billion.
Let's frame this in context. This is arguing over a 2 cent line item on a $300 bill.
And we wonder why our government is the laughing stock of the free world.
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What are you going to do, put them in prison which costs $60k/year per person? Not helping costs more than giving them money.
Not helping costs more than giving them money.
"Conservatives" don't care about saving money, especially if saving money accidentally helps the poor.
He's saying "why should we the people subsidize Walmart?".
Let Walmart pay at least what it actually costs to provide labor.
The end game of these libertarian fantasies is the literal wholesale murder of millions of poor "undesirables", either directly on the small scale and justified as self defense or the defence of property, or enmasse through isolation into ghettos and systematic starvation. It would dwarf the Holocaust in numbers of dead.
If you start with the premise (itself not unreasonable) that every individual has a right to defend themselves from harm and their property from theft, and you have millions of people with no ability to survive other than the appropriation of resources by force, you're going to end up with a lot of dead humans. And when the tent cities gather enough boldness and enough desperation to march on the proper cities, then you'd have the military and police slaughtering thousands at a time to protect the property rights of the middle and upper classes.
Horrifying to imagine, but there are some people who would not only be willing to go through this conflagration, but would practically welcome it. Indeed, some are even working in earnest to bring it about. They want to see the streets run red with the blood of the poor. The worst reflection I've ever had on the human condition is that some of them don't just see this nightmare as a horrible means justified by a glorious utopian end--the process itself satisfies some dark urge inside them to cause pain on the largest scale possible. If evil exists, this is it.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
And religion is their solution, because it teaches people about long-held human moral principals like don't have kids out of wedlock, families should stick together, and communities should help each other.
They talk a big game, but when push comes to shove, let's face facts - most 'Christians' in America ('cuz let's face it, when we say "religion," they're the group we're likely discussing) don't give a fuck about helping the poor. They just don't.
Most of them spend their hour with Jesus on Sunday (an extra one on Wednesday for the AoG scammers), and the minute they hit the fucking parking lot, they go back to being the same selfish, narcissistic assclowns they are every other day of the week. I get to see the behavior regularly, by virtue of the fact my home is surrounded by churches; I've learned that leaving the house at noon on a Sunday is just not going to happen, because most of those goodly "Christians" would sooner run you into the ditch than let you out of your own fucking driveway.
You can talk about all the moralistic high-ground as you want, but until that talk translates into actually helping people, you're not accomplishing anything except paying lip-service. To me, that's worse than doing nothing at all.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
But if you are going to take the tough love approach and cut off their food stamps, which I agree must be done, you do still need to make sure there's love in that action. If you treat them like you hate or distain them, you are going to push them further down the path they're already on.
Excuse me, you're getting in the way of all this righteous indignation we've worked up here. If we can't blame the poor and ignorant for their poverty and ignorance, how can we look down on our fellow man and absolve ourselves of any responsibility to help them?
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)