Happy Easter Sunday. My wife Michelle and I sincerely hope and wish you all a wonderful and happy holiday.
Holidays are a time to reflect, appreciate the gift of life, but also the possibilities of how we can extend ourselves to helping others in need.
Today’s New York Times has an article entitled, “States Slashing Social Programs for Vulnerable” by Erik Eckholm. This article reports upon the recent slashing of budgets for programs by a majority of states that serve the most vulnerable of populations. These include the elderly and high risk sub-populations prone to child abuse.
While in the short term cutting these programs can help balance state budgets, slashing such budgets will disrupt critical preventive efforts that would save money and reduce human suffering over time.
The United States has been facing rising health care costs for many decades. Slashing of prevention programs targeted at the most vulnerable populations is politically expedient to cope with short term budget deficits. However, in the intermediate and longer term cutting these programs will adversely impact overall health care costs for state and federal programs in years to come.
A way forward would be to complete a thorough due diligence to estimate the short term budget savings while accounting for the longer term adverse impact on human health and forecasted cost burdens to the state. Only by factoring both indirect and indirect costs into a thoughtful review of proposed reductions in social programs will policy makers be able to ensure fiscal discipline that does not forsake the overall physical and financial health of our country.
My grandmother used to say to me as a little boy, “we are only as strong as our weakest link.” To cope with the current budget crisis we can surely find ways of meeting budget shortfalls that do not slash serves for our most vulnerable populations.
