Trump’s Cuts to Meals on Wheels Could Hurt Veterans, Raise Health-Care Costs

by Polly Mosendz

March 17, 2017

The program feeds over half a million veterans annually and, it says, helps keep homebound seniors out of the hospital.

One of the casualties of President Donald Trump's proposed budget may be Meals on Wheels, the familiar food delivery program for homebound Americans. The aim is to decrease federal spending, but cuts to the service could backfire by raising health-care costs, the program warned.

The spending plan calls for reductions to two grants that Meals on Wheels relies on in some locations, as well as to federal departments that help fund the program, spokeswoman Jenny Bertolette said in a statement. "With a stated 17.9 percent cut to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services budget," Bertolette said, "it is difficult to imagine a scenario in which these critical services would not be significantly and negatively impacted if enacted into law." 

The program, which delivers meals to individual homes and senior centers, feeds more than 2.4 million Americans 60 and older—more than half a million of them veterans. It delivers about 218 million meals a year, according to a Meals on Wheels fact sheet (PDF). Most recipients live alone, take more than six medications, and rely on these meals for at least half the food they consume. 

One indirect benefit is that frail recipients getting proper nutrition are less likely to fall, and one day's hospitalization costs the same as a year of Meals on Wheels, the program says on its website. Such accidents cost $31 billion in 2015 in Medicare expenses alone, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported. "Seniors remaining at home, out of hospitals and nursing homes, saves billions in Medicare and Medicaid costs," the program says. 

A 2010 partnership paired Meals on Wheels programs with local health systems to serve recently discharged seniors. The participating hospitals found that readmission rates fell to 6 percent from 17 to 20 percent nationally, according to Bertolette. A 2013 review in the journal Nutrition and Health credited meal delivery programs with improving dietary quality, nutrition, and quality of life. 

"The benefit of the Meals on Wheels program is far beyond its intended impact," said Dr. Ruopeng An, an author of the review and an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. "By providing these daily meals to older adults, it decreases their risk of hospitalization and staying in a nursing home, which is cost-saving in the long term." 

The proposed budget would increase funding for the military by $54 billion and reduce allocations to other departments by the same amount. The document, which bears the title “America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again,” sets forth the administration’s general goals and priorities but, like most presidential budgets, won't make it through Congress as is. 

The Trump administration defended cuts during a news conference on Thursday, saying Community Development Block Grants had failed. CDBGs help fund affordable housing, low-income services, and community development projects.

"Meals on Wheels is not a federal program. It's part of ... the block grants that we give to the states. Many states make the decision to use that money on Meals on Wheels. We've spent $150 billion on [CDBGs] since the 1970s," Mick Mulvaney, the president's budget chief, said. Since the second Bush administration, he said, the block grants haven't shown results. "We can't spend money on programs just because they sound good," Mulvaney said. "Meals on Wheels sounds great."

Meals on Wheels also provides social benefits to its users, 36 percent of whom live in rural communities and 51 percent of whom live alone. Besides providing meals, deliverers "chat with the older adults, and they bring those older adults to additional services" they might not know about, Dr. An said. "This might reduce the loneliness of older adults and serve as a safety net by tracking and monitoring the health condition of those adults." 

About a third of Meals on Wheels funding comes from the Older Americans Act of 1965, under which it received more than half a billion dollars in 2014. Meals on Wheels also gets grant funding and accepts donations. But even without the cuts in the proposed budget, the program is already suffering from funding shortfalls, currently delivering 23 million fewer meals annually than it did in 2005. 

"While we don’t know the exact impact yet, cuts of any kind to these highly successful and leveraged programs would be a devastating blow to our ability to provide much-needed care for millions of vulnerable seniors in America," Meals on Wheels America Chief Executive Officer Ellie Hollander said in a statement. That, in turn, she said, "saves billions of dollars in reduced health care expenses.”

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Make America Great Again - ha!

With the words, “To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan,” President Lincoln affirmed the government’s obligation to care for those injured during the war and to provide for the families of those who perished on the battlefield. 

We would not have a problem with conservatives if they were as consistent with their actions as they are with their words. Basically, any so called entitlement is not an entitlement if they are benefiting from it. Ever hear anyone wanting to remove agriculture supports? Nope, they say supports help the ‘family farmer’, but it is the big operators who really benefit.

Republican voters are like the Minions. 

Guess who the Minions will blame?

Obama and Democrats!