Children’s HealthWatch founder and Principal Investigator, Dr. Deborah Frank, Featured in Fierce Health Finance on the health care impacts of cutting SNAP.
Docs: Cuts to food stamps likely to increase healthcare costs
Doctors are warning that cutting food stamps could increase healthcare costs for the federal government, causing higher rates of diabetes and developmental problems for young children, among other problems, the Associated Press reported.
“If you’re interested in saving healthcare costs, the dumbest thing you can do is cut nutrition,” Deborah Frank, M.D., of Boston Medical Center, who founded the Children’s HealthWatch pediatric research institute, told the AP. “People don’t make the hunger-health connection.”
A study published in the journal Health Affairs found that hospital admissions for hypoglycemia among low-income patients with diabetes spiked at the end of the month, when food stamp recipients tend to run out of their monthly allotment.
The risk of being admitted for hypoglycemia increased 27 percent in the last week of the month compared with the first week in the month among low-income patients with diabetes, the study found. The risk did not increase among higher-income patients with diabetes.
