Posted on 06/06/2023 3:08:03 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Expanded SNAP work requirements will do more harm than good
As a family physician, I've rarely heard someone tell me how I could make better life choices -- everyone knows that I was the one studying for the MCAT while my friends partied. But when I went public about my family's reliance on SNAP/EBT (food stamps), I suddenly found that a large number of people thought I was incapable of making good decisions.
Back in January 2013, I was just a couple years out of residency and my life was planned. My husband and I had always prioritized my career, so the next steps seemed obvious. My husband would stay home with our kids, an infant and a toddler at the time, while I worked to pay off my student loans and the mortgage on the small fixer-upper we'd bought when I was in medical school. I was still trying to get in the rhythm of parenting two kids while working in a busy family medicine office when I noticed that something was terribly wrong.
I went to a colleague and nonchalantly said, "So...ever since yesterday, whenever I reach for something, I miss."
She looked confused.
I demonstrated by trying to reach for a door knob, with my hand landing too far to the right.
"Robin!" she exclaimed. "You could be having a stroke!"
Our office manager drove me to the ER and asked if I thought it was just stress. I told her that I didn't know. But on some level, I knew. It was definitely more than just stress. The friendly emergency physician did his usual cheerful sing-song set of questions. The nurse got me a warm blanket. I was taken back for imaging.
When the CT was done and I was being wheeled out of the room, I glanced back to where the tech sat and saw my scan. There were several spots on my right cerebellum. I tried to remember something about hypodensities versus hyperdensities, but it all swam together. Did the spots mean something acute? Chronic?
In my little ER bay, my husband had arrived with our kids. The baby reached eagerly for me. She didn't care that I was a tangle of cords and lines. The toddler hung back anxiously, not sure what to do. The emergency physician returned. This time he was calm and quiet. He was followed by two nurses and a student. They filed in and he sat down on the stool.
"S#@&," I thought. "He's got an entourage and he's sitting down."
I don't remember how he prefaced what he was going to say. My stomach sank in anticipation of bad news -- when else does an ER doc sit down?
Out of the haze of words, I heard him say "vertebral artery dissection and cerebellar strokes."
"Oh thank heavens!" I exclaimed. "It's strokes. Then I can start getting better."
Everyone in the room looked startled; I still remember the expression on each of their faces so clearly.
"It could have been something that would get worse," I explained. "But a stroke is something to recover from."
Immediately after I got home from the hospital, my husband and I discussed next steps. I needed help with moving around, and I certainly couldn't care for the kids by myself. Some people suggested that we should put our kids in government-subsidized child care so that my husband could get a job. But I'm sure anyone who has sacrificed to make it through medical training will understand that the priority is always to get back to the career.
Luckily, we figured out a way that I could get back to work on a limited basis, with the support of my husband and SNAP to make sure we could make ends meet. I had just opened a direct primary care micro-practice and had fewer than a dozen patients. My plan had been to continue in my old job simultaneously for another year, but given the circumstances, we decided my best option was to focus on my own practice, which could work around my recovery. I was cognitively adept and could still care for patients; typing patient notes and the physical exam portion of the appointment just took a little longer since I was still re-learning to do everything. Every morning, my husband would help me down our front steps, drive me to work, and get me settled. I could catnap between patients and he would bring me home at lunchtime to rest and then take me to any appointments in the afternoon. Resigning from my old job was hard on so many levels, but I couldn't even drive to work safely, much less work a regular schedule.
Initially, I was only able to work for an hour at a time because I fatigued so quickly. That meant I couldn't manage more than about 8 hours a week at first. Given our limited income, SNAP was absolutely life-saving. But with the help of an excellent care team and my wonderful husband, I was able to gradually increase my hours, and about 18 months later we were able to get off food stamps.
Given the fact that SNAP literally saved my career and my family at one point in my life, you can imagine my dismay when I read that SNAP work requirements were expandedopens in a new tab or window for specific beneficiaries as part of the debt ceiling agreement.
Most situations that cause someone to end up on SNAP are complicated. It's usually a mix of bad luck and a broken system. While most working-age SNAP recipients do work, approximately two-thirdsopens in a new tab or window of participants are in families with children, and over one-third are in households with older adults or people with disabilities. Many of those who are of working age are in unstable and low-paying jobs. An increasing number of SNAP recipients are working full timeopens in a new tab or window but can't make ends meet because of the shockingly low pay they receive. Often, their options are limited due to transportation issues or family responsibilities. Flexibility in work-hour requirements gives people the ability to seek better opportunities or otherwise do what they can to improve their situation.
Even before the expanded requirements, SNAP already incentivized people to get jobs and already had significant work requirements in place. In fact, it's been shownopens in a new tab or window that increasing work requirements doesn't actually increase work, it just increases hunger. People are already doing the best they can, and putting more barriers in place for specific populations will only do more harm than good.
As physicians, we know our advice to patients to eat a particular diet for their health condition is at least as important as medication, and often more so. Caring for our most vulnerable by making sure they have food to eat should be a non-partisan issue. So why is the government making access to food even more challenging?
Robin Dickinson, MD, is a family physician, who returned to practice for 7 years after her strokes. She is now adjunct faculty at Rocky Vista University and the creator of Dr. Robin's Schoolopens in a new tab or window, which teaches kids how their bodies work and prepares budding physicians from elementary age.
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That’s right troll out the stories of his work requirements for benefits are evil…
I shudder to think about her caring for patients when she is too sick to care for kids. No disability insurance from her job?
?
Say you’re homeless, boom, no work requirements. One conservative writer called the work requirements so limited that they are “symbolic”
So why is the government making access to food so easy in a country in which over 70% are overweight, resulting in an estimated 280,000 premature deaths per year? See my post from yesterday
Welfare and growing dependency upon government. What determines income in Federal Poverty Guidelines (2022)?. And Food hunger in America: More Hype than Reality. Why?
For cases as this women some provision could be made.
I can tell you how to do any job and end up on food stamps. Give away your services for free and ask other people to pay your expenses. Then you get the credit for the good deeds and nobody ask how you support yourself.
And nothing would have changed for her and her family with the new requirements being enacted. I’m tired of the media and left trotting out the “kids, grandma and the disabled are gonna starve” crap.
The new requirements only affect those aged 50-54, single with no dependents and that are able to work or receive employment training...
Sounds like a problem right there... husband not working at all.
Yeah, the increased work requirements are a *snap* unless one is that situation.
I’ve been getting food stamps, and my commitment to the Lord has been with the superior, by His grace. I have to attest to the truth because so many Christians and/or conservatives want to claim they must be superior to me. And I’m not going to be demeaned when the truth is otherwise, and I’ve been dedicated to Him while very often resisting temptation. I was born into so much godless liberalism in New York State, and by God’s grace left it and also left living as a lesbian. And I work tirelessly for Christ, not content to carry on with “business as usual” and just watch as the faith dwindle and recede here in the U.S. — despite the church here having the most resources and the least amount of persecution and limitations in human history. It’s allowed the prosperity to destroy it. As the Bible says about souls shrinking back. And now for decades I haven’t been welcomed in the world, but also in the church that wants to pursue the similar worldly things and operate as a worldly business.
To the Lord, the church’s wastefulness is a lot like the U.S. just leaving behind its weapons in Afghanistan.
And so I’ve been willing to work menial jobs in order to work for the Lord on my own time. Until I developed some physical problems as I got older. Yet I haven’t been able to get disability. And I have no relative with similar beliefs.
And there really aren’t many services out there, or help from churches. But the real thing is to me, is that if the church here was following the Bible, I would have had a place in it, a place in a ministry somewhere. But it wants to go on with business as usual while in retreat, which it shouldn’t be in, with all it has, especially, having Christ himself.
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