Food Stamps Fuel Medical Costs Increase

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   estopherposted 14 years ago

   This is more of a feeler, but I was wondering if anyone else noticed that welfare recipients grow increasingly unhealthy due to weight gained on the food stamp program and then are raising the cost of federal health insurance for the medical problem that come from being over-weight? Just wondering but it seems to me as if government programs are fueling the need for more government programs. Obama claims that the raise in health care is due to being over-weight and the diseases associated with that, but is the welfare programs not fueling that problem?

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2. 66

   Flightkeeperposted 14 years ago

   You're assuming that people on food stamps grow fat from it is a fact.  How do you know it's true?

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3. 67

   Michael Willisposted 14 years ago

   Of course Greed, outrageous bonuses to CEO's, lavish homes and lifestyles of the heads of the medical Industry, and the record Profits being made have absolutely nothing to do with it.
   It has to be the poor and their health.  Let's just cut them off at the knees.
   
   Now to the point of your question...No. I don't think "welfare" is the main cause of the high medical cost. People with money are having problems with being over weight as well as poor people. They do have less choices for health needs. They may get free care in emergencies, but...some could be prevented if they had a chance to get "preventive care" which is not free.

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   yoshi97posted 14 years ago

   Obesity does not favor the poor ... People of all walks of life can become obese, so I can't honestly say it's caused by food stamps

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   jiberishposted 14 years ago

   Well maybe people get fat on food stamps because they eat more mac & cheese.  I do know that the WIC for pregnant woman requires cheese, milk and eggs.  That's kinda fatning.

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   fortunerepposted 14 years ago

   you have got to be kidding me.  Food Stamps making people fat?
   
   You know it is so easy to judge others on Welfare, and thank God I have never had to go there, but that time may come and it may for lots of people and no one is excluded.  I would hope that you would be a little less closed minded.  People don't always choose to be poor.

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7. 63

   Lisa HWposted 14 years ago

   I don't think you can blame the food stamps program for weight problems in the people with the incomes that make them eligible for food stamps.  Food stamps or no food stamps, stress contributes to weight gain in a lot of people, especially those who live under too much stress for too long.  Anyone eligible for food stamps has some "income issue", and if anyone knows what welfare or social security recipients get as an income it's a wonder a lot of them don't just kill themselves and end the suffering. 
   
   So, maybe more than a lot of other Americans (who also have a high rate of obesity, income or not), food stamp recipients have unbearable stress that makes them need carbohydrates to keep going.  (I once wrote an article on stress and food cravings, and it is a medical/scientific fact that a stressed out body will need high-energy foods in order to function.)
   
   I believe the government is responsible for a lot of the poverty that results in the need for food stamps, because welfare programs and courts have practices that trap people in poverty.  In that way, I see government programs as contributing to a whole lot of poverty (and probably, indirectly, obesity).  That, though, is to me the reason it's laughable to hear government people talk about paying for things like health clubs to "encourage a healthy lifestyle".

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