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.'"

Comments

Re:No

[mosb1000]

Quart of milk or orange juice cost more than a quart of soda.

Orange juice is actually worse for you than soda, that's why you drink it from a smaller glass. If you buy it from concentrate, it will be about the same price as soda. I am on a budget, so that's what I do. I rarely by soda, but when I do I buy it in fancy glass bottles because it's a treat.

Canned vegetables (high sodium) cost more than frozen.

And they're much worse for you. Again, I'm on a budget so I only buy frozen vegetables.

Where I live, high-fat hamburger is much cheaper than chicken.

I've never seen that, and I would be really surprised if it were true. I buy 3-pound bags of frozen chicken for $5, and 3-pound bags of frozen hamburgers for $10. Maybe the story is a little different if you're buying fresh, but then you probably aren't shopping on a budget anyway.

I know a disabled veteran who is diabetic. He can't afford to eat the meals the VA nutritionist recommends.

I'd have to know more about this to unpack it, but my own experience is that buying frozen food is much cheaper than anything else except for rice, beans, and flower. Nutritionally, there is no reason to pick fresh food over frozen food.

Re:Decreased Costs

[Penguinisto]

All of the fat asses will have less food. If they want better nutrition maybe they should get a better job.

Well, one small problem... okay, a couple:

Grocery stores are a bit rare in the ghetto, and those few which exist usually charge exorbitant prices while providing very little in the way of variety (and don't ask about the produce.)

Most of these mothers have a shit education courtesy of public schooling (assuming the mother actually completed high school - usually she didn't), so "dinner" usually means fast-food takeout, or whatever the local bodega has in the way of food (imagine growing up on convenience store burritos and soda every night...)

Jobs suck in depressed areas - triply so if you have no education.

Moving (or even saving up enough money to do that) is a trial at best - especially when you consider that most "services" in depressed areas are geared towards screwing over the poor (see also payday loans, credit cards, etc).

Finally, the capper: government assistance sucks. It is geared towards insuring that once you are on it, you never come off of it. The moment you start making any money, you get taxed hard, you lose the assistance funding, and they kick you out of that government-assisted housing. Oh, and since you haven't the education or funds to access tax specialists or any other real option, you're basically fucked and stuck.

Now this isn't always the case - with the help of family, you can pull yourself out of such straits. However, because family has been pretty much obliterated over the decades in these areas by the lack of fathers, and by an overweening demand by certain ideologues that family is an anachronism? Well, it's part of how you wind up with a permanent underclass. ...and no one seems to want to fix this. The right wants to cut down funds in order to force initiative and drive, while the left wants to smooth over it with more money. To be honest, neither answer is correct - but a hybrid of the two would work well, if done right. Put a time limit on the funds, but require the recipient take classes, look for work, etc - then provide enough assistance towards the end so that the newly-working single mother isn't faced with instant penalties just for making a paycheck.

Re:Math, do it.

[Ol Olsoc]

That's a large part of it. But I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around something that was in the summary: it said that 1 in 7 Americans are on stamps. That's an appalling statistic -- 1 in 7 Americans are poor enough that they wouldn't be able to feed themselves without government assistance?

There are two Americas. One in which a lot of people like those who work at WalMart, and fast food joints work, and yes, a lot of those folks qualify easily for Food stamps.

Minimum wage is the working wage for many people. And while it is common for many to bray about how a higher minimum wage is a job killer, who picks up that tab for the food stamps? Hint, it's the rest of us. And that's the big thing. These companies have managed to get the taxpayers to pay for their employees food stamps so that we can have "Everyday Low Low Prices!"

And let's not forget Section 8 housing, so that these people have a place to live.

So what to do? Unless we want to engage in some horrible Soylent Green solution, we have a lot of people out there who need to have some way of feeding and housing themselves. And despite what some say, a lot of these people work very hard, not a "Welfare Queen" in sight. For many of these folk, a Job at WalMart is about th height they can aspire to. And that's okay - I think that for too long, Americans have been sold the idea that the only thing keeping anyone from wealth and fame is their "will" or lack of it.

I'm not even sure how we do it at this point, because it is a mess. If we take as a starting point that the average American should be able to afford a modest house and to be self sufficient in feeding and clothing their family - that is becoming difficult. And if we have the idea that if the person who is willing to work, they should be able to support themselves, it becomes even more daunting. GIven that the average age of a McDonald's worker is now alomst 30, we can see that some folks are now trying to eke out a career in these places. At our local Mickey D's, a lot of the workers have degrees. They just don't have anywhere up the ladder to go. And they aren't lazy either.

For myself, I rose well out of the social level that I was born into. And at one point, I thought that "will" was all it took. But upon retirement, and upon reflection, I did all that by being sort of pathological, which is not a trait that would work if everyone had it - we'd all be at each other throats.

Re:Strawberry Shortcake Popsicle

[DogDude]

I saw military jets do a flyover over our local University football stadium this weekend.

Now, tell me more about this wasted $13.50 that you witnessed...