Sequester Impact: 1 In 7 Seniors Struggle With Hunger
Crooks and Liars Diane Sweet writes about the impact the Sequester is having on something I used to do when working part time at an assisted care and nuring home in Bensonville, Illinois while pursuing my first BA. “Meals on Wheels” would bring a meal a day to the elderly. Since some were apartment-bound with no way to get to a store; potentially, this was their only meal for the day. Often times, I was also the only face they might see that day. In My Datsun 510 (college transportation), I would make a dozen or so stops when I did this. I can vouch for the gratitude I received from making the deliveries.
While Social Security has kept many afloat in today’s economy, 15% of the elderly still live in poverty as determined by the supplemental measurement.
As Diane Sweet points out, the Sequester has only made it worst for seniors who depend on this and other programs to make ends meet and to bring them the simplest of things . . . a meal and a face at the door.
Sequester Impact: 1 In 7 Seniors Struggle With Hunger
Sequester cuts will total $1.2 trillion through fiscal year 2021. This year there is a 5.3 percent cut, totaling $85 billion. The cuts are indiscriminate and will impact nearly every federal program. Here are some of the ways this year’s cut is affecting food and hunger programs:
Meals for needy seniors lost in programs like Meals on Wheels (MOW): 4 million
Savings from cut of 4 million meals: $10 million
Rise in Medicaid costs due to cut of 4 million meals: $489 million
Net cost to U.S. federal budget due to cut of 4 million meals: $479 million
Loss of senior meals, California: 750,000
Loss of senior breakfasts, Palm Beach County, Fla.: 240 daily
Loss of senior meals in group dining facilities, Detroit suburbs and several counties: 86,000
Loss of home-delivered and group dining senior meals, La Crosse County, Wis.: 6,000
Ellie Hollander, president and CEO of the Meals on Wheels Association of America: “The real impact of sequester is that our programs don’t have the ability to expand to meet the growing need. We should be investing in these programs to ensure our seniors have the nutritious meals they need to remain healthy and independent.”
Patricia Hoeft, director of senior center nutrition, the Mid-East Area Agency on Aging (Missouri): “How do I decide which 300 seniors aren’t going to eat that day?”
Meals on Wheels recipient, home delivery program, La Crosse County, Wis.: “These meals are sometimes the only meal that I have a day. I don’t drive, so I have to rely on others to get around to doctors’ appointments. I only get $16 a month for food.”
References:
– “Sequester Impact: 1 In 7 Seniors Struggle With Hunger” Diane Sweet Crooks and Liars
– “Hunger and the Sequester, By the Numbers” Bill Moyers “What Really Matters”
– “A State-by-State Snapshot of Poverty Among Seniors: Findings From Analysis of the Supplemental Poverty Measure” The Henry J Kaiser Family Foundation
“Granny starvers”says Charles Pierce at Esquire.com.
Go watch Bill Moyers The Faces of American’s Hungry . He discusses food insecurity. There is a new movie about it A Place at the Table. It starts with a police officer, the only one the town can now afford (they had 3). They can’t pay him enough, thus he and his family are using the local food bank. The next person up is rancher who works the ranch 7 to 3 and then goes clean the local school 3 to 11. Both in Colorado.
This nation is so messed up in the head currently.
You are being unrealistic. Food is scarce in a capitalist society. The US is not productive enough to feed everybody. This isn’t like China or something where everyone can get a bowl of rice a day.
Or maybe not.
Noni’s Law: when you cut social services, the cost of social services goes up.
And child poverty and hunger is higher than for seniors.
Anecdotally, I think I have noticed a flowback of seniors northward over the winter. Snowbirds are obviously an annual occurrence, but usually there aren’t all that many seniors in MA in the winter, particularly not in the urban areas. I think the number may be increasing. I don’t know of a source for data that would back that up (there certainly is a dataset, addresses for social security recipients, but I don’t know where you would get a recent feed of that data).
Maybe you could use November election demographics as a proxy? That’s usually just ahead of the really cold weather.
Those same seniors tend to vote GOP with the white, over 65 crowd being the GOP’s strongest demographic. I recall a letter to our local newspaper just before Johnson unseated Feingold from an alleged senior indicating that she was going to vote for Johnson because she thought he would better protect her social security. Of course the letter could have been a plant, but maybe seniors vote the way they do because of senility or the hallucinations brought on by hunger.
Probably not exactly senility. Seniors, like the rest of us, rely on newspapers and television for information. These sources routinely lie, or simply repeat the lies of politicians without any serious attempt to find out the truth… and this includes the various “politi-fact” similar columns which get thir “truth” from Peterson paid non partisan expert liars.
And this is not limited to Republicans. The Democrats routinely lie, or display unbelievable ignorance about Social Security.
I modestly suggest the only way you can hope to know the “real truth” about anything is to investigate it yourself, and then only if you are pretty ruthless at detecting propaganda and your own biases.
The country is run by liars. With the limitation that the liars have to be careful to match their lies to the prevailing popular opinions in their districts… popular opinions based in part on old lies, but with at least some basis in experience when people lived in actual neighborhoods and knew what was happening to other people like them.
Agreed Coberly, but I do sometimes wonder at the credulity of older people. In fact I think they did a study a while back that suggested the elderly are more likely to fall for scams because of changes in the way the brain works as people age.
Terry
I used to believe that. Then I went to school and learned how to do “studies.”
And I got to watch quite young people, including me, fall for scams. It’s easy when you know how.
(but it is quite sad, and a demonstrable truth, that many old people are easy to prey on. and apparently a good bit of our economy depends on that.)