Food pantry lines will grow if health care is rescinded – by David Sarasohn

July 25, 2017 – The health care debate in Congress has drawn lots of attention this summer, but the subject comes up in other places.

Talking to clients at food pantries recently about what had brought them in, Oregon Food Bank workers noticed something: The strain of health care costs was mentioned only about half as often as it came up in 2012.

Apparently, there’s an aspect of Obamacare (aka Affordable Care Act or ACA) that could also be called Hungercare.

“This has been a game-changer for the people experiencing hunger,” Susannah Morgan, Oregon Food Bank CEO, says about the ACA. “This has had the single greatest impact on the people we serve in my 20 years in hunger advocacy.”

Health care’s impact on hunger hasn’t been prominent in the debate about ACA, at least outside of food pantries. But the connection isn’t hard to imagine; limited income leaves people with hard choices.

“People without health insurance must often choose between purchasing food and medicine,” declared Rev. David Beckmann, president of the Christian hunger advocacy group Bread for the World, which has warned steadily of the effects of repealing ACA on hunger. “The dramatic cuts to Medicaid in the (Senate Republican health care proposal) would have disproportionately affected the elderly, people with disabilities, and children.”

As Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden pointed out, “Health problems and nutrition problems are two sides of the same coin.”

Or, you could say, two problems of the same people. As Morgan notes, “Our population and the Medicaid population overlap significantly.”

Any change for one shows up in the other. Any change in the health care system shows up in the food pantry as quickly as it appears in the emergency room.

It will show up particularly fast in Oregon, which has leaped to take advantage of the new rules, and expanded its Medicaid enrollment dramatically. A cut in Washington, D.C., will bleed profusely in Washington County.

“Any time there’s a cutback,” says Morgan, “we’re going to feel it, because we took more advantage.”

And it’s not as if any coming changes are likely to be a zero-sum game. In the safety-net atmosphere, the temperature could fall well below zero.

In late July, the U.S. House Budget Committee sent the House a proposed spending plan. Although Congress has been unable to devise a replacement for ACA and its massive expansion of Medicaid, the Budget Committee envisioned a giant reduction in Medicaid spending – along with sharp reductions in food stamps and other income supports.

If those cuts were combined with an attack on the Affordable Care Act, warns Jim Weill, president of the Food Research Action Center, a D.C. think tank, the impact could be stunning.

Over the last 40 years, he points out, the earning capacity of a 30-year-old working parent has declined steadily. During that time, expansion of Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit, food stamps and school lunch and breakfast programs have somewhat eased the drop.

If those programs are cut, says Weill, “Those workers won’t just be marginally worse off, they’ll be much worse off.”

And the people waiting at food pantries – waiting in much longer lines at food pantries – will have very different stories to tell.

The huge cuts may not happen. As of late July, the attack on the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid hit a snag in the Senate, as a number of Republican senators – in some cases reminded by Republican governors – considered how the cuts would affect their states. Some Republicans might come to the same realization about the other programs.

“Many Republicans don’t realize how many of their constituents get these benefits,” notes Weill. Against many assumptions, the programs actually have a larger rural than urban impact.

But food banks would notice the change immediately.

The initial drive against ACA may have hit a bump, but nobody thinks its enemies will give up.

“We’re not home free,” says Wyden. “There are no final victories.”

Hunger fighters know the feeling.