Broken Healthcare is the Biggest Cause of Hunger in the US
In the wealthiest country in the history of the world, 1 in 8 people are food insecure due largely to rising healthcare costs.
The US Department of Agriculture keeps rigorous data on the American peoples’ food security (or lack thereof), and their most recent report should concern everyone. They found that 10.5% of US households experienced food insecurity in 2020, meaning that roughly 13.8 million households had disruptions of access to proper nutrition. Of this group, 6.6% of households experienced low food security, which the USDA defines as having “reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet.” The remaining 3.9% of households experienced very low food security. This is when a household has “multiple indications of disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake.”
This translates to:
- People living in food-insecure households: 38.3 million people.
- Households with very low food security: 9.4 million.
- Children experiencing food insecurity: 6.1 million.
The most food-insecure states in the union include West Virginia, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky, while the least food-insecure are Washington, Oregon, California, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Virginia, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and New Jersey.
Why? In a country with so much wealth, why do so many people go hungry?
Broken Healthcare
Compared to other industrialized countries, the US healthcare system is easily the most expensive. The country spends roughly 17% of its GDP on health expenditures, which is much more than other high-income countries, as shown in the graph below.
The 2015 International Federation of Health Plans Comparative Price Report—an in-depth comparison of healthcare costs in the United States, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Spain—paints a more specific picture. The authors of the report found that the average MRI bill was $1,119 in the US, $811 in New Zealand, $215 in Australia, and $181 in Spain. For a hip replacement, the average cost in the US was $10,000 higher than Australia, the next most expensive country. On average, prescription drugs were over twice as expensive as the 2nd-ranked country for a month’s supply. Medications like Avastin, a common medication used in fighting cancer, costs $3,930 in the U.S., $1,752 in Switzerland, and only $470 in the UK. The only example in which the US was not the most expensive was with OxyContin, which is a whole story in itself.
The authors of the above study believe 3 factors have caused such high prices. First, hospital consolidations have led to a lack of competition and increased market control. This study found that when hospitals merge, patients “experience price increases of 6-10 percent relative to control hospitals.” Second, the US is the only developed nation without a universal healthcare system. Other developed nations keep healthcare costs under control by removing large corporations and countless middlemen from the equation. And third, healthcare markets don’t have enough regulation, thus allowing price gouging and other unethical business practices.
Despite the high costs, US citizens are not getting more for their buck. Plotting data on life expectancy vs. healthcare costs since 1970 demonstrates that paying more for healthcare hasn’t substantially increased life expectancy when compared to other industrialized nations. In the graph below, the US is the clear outlier, defying the commonly held idea amongst conservative voters that the US healthcare system is the best in the world. It’s not even close.
Food or Medicine?
How are food insecurity and healthcare costs connected? Healthcare costs are so high that millions of US citizens are forced to choose between medicine and food. According to the non-profit Feeding America, which helps operate charitable food networks across the country and collects valuable data on those it serves, 66% of households that rely on food programs need to make the choice between food and medical care. Healthcare costs are so expensive, especially for the uninsured, that they can easily eat up the budget for other essentials, particularly proper nutrition.
The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, a partner of Feeding America, highlighted the struggle of Casey from the small town of Huntington, MA. Casey is a single mother of 3 and, when Casey’s son was 6, he began suffering from severe asthma. Very quickly, medical costs spun out of control. Her son needed nebulizer treatments, inhaler treatments, multiple pills, frequent hospital visits, etc. Initially, Casey applied for and received Supplemental Security Income and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, but despite these, she was often forced to go without food and to cut back on the quality and quantity of food given to her children. If it wasn’t for Feeding America and their partner organizations, her child’s ballooning healthcare costs would’ve swallowed the family.
Making the matter worse, when people experience food insecurity, they might enter into what’s called the “food insecurity/chronic disease cycle.” The cycle begins with food insecurity. This causes a decrease in nutrition and an increase in stress. Over time, these can lead to or exacerbate existing diseases, which leads to increased health expenditures, decreased employability, and decreased income. All of these, of course, lead to more food insecurity. As expected, multiple studies have confirmed that there are “higher rates of chronic disease in low-income, food-insecure adults between the ages of 18 and 65.” If the cycle is not broken, it can become worse each time around, leading to serious health issues, death, and/or bankruptcy.
It’ll Get Worse Before It Gets Better
Unfortunately, both healthcare costs and food insecurity are likely to become worse for US citizens, pushing more people into the “food insecurity/chronic disease cycle.” One of the main reasons for this is the COVID-19 pandemic, which has created economic hardships, hindered mobility, and caused supplies to dwindle in virtually every country. The World Bank notes that “COVID-19 impacts led to severe and widespread increases in global food insecurity, affecting vulnerable households in almost every country, with impacts expected to continue into 2022 and possibly beyond.”
Furthermore, the US healthcare system isn’t changing anytime soon and costs will continue to go up. Some experts predict that spending on health care will grow at 5.8% per year until 2025. By 2025, it will make up 20.1% of U.S. GDP.”
And lastly, income disparity continues to grow. As wealth becomes more concentrated in the hands of the super rich, the average US citizen increasingly struggles to survive and thrive. The graph below clearly demonstrates that the average person has seen little income growth for decades, while the income of the upper echelons has skyrocketed.
The result of this is that the average person must make difficult decisions to live. According to Feeding America, the majority of households dependent on charitable food donations are regularly forced to not only make decisions between medical care and food but also between food and utilities (69%), food and transportation (67%), and food and housing (57%).
What the solutions are, I don’t know exactly. None of us have a perfect answer to such a complex problem, but I think we can all agree that a situation like Casey’s above shouldn’t happen in a modern, developed country. The fact that it is happening and so widespread means we have to admit that our systems and the values they’re built on might be flawed. For a nation with so much wealth and a nation built on Judeo-Christian principles, you’d think such a situation wouldn’t be possible. But yet here we are.
Stephen Colbert summed it up nicely: “If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.”
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