{"id":5869,"date":"2021-08-20T14:32:58","date_gmt":"2021-08-20T14:32:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=5869"},"modified":"2021-08-20T14:32:58","modified_gmt":"2021-08-20T14:32:58","slug":"why-food-and-housing-assistance-is-essential-for-improving-americas-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=5869","title":{"rendered":"Why food and housing assistance is essential for improving America\u2019s health"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>\n\n&#8220;There is an underappreciated contributor to the United States\u2019 comparatively poor health: We underinvest in social services that help people live healthier lives and therefore overspend on medical care relative to other developed countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The long-term trends in US health care, as&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/policy-and-politics\/22555949\/us-health-care-system-ranking-covid-19-pandemic\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">I wrote about earlier this week<\/a>, tell a clear story: Medical outcomes have gotten better, with measures of life expectancy and disease burden improving over the last 25 years, but they haven\u2019t improved as much as they have in other wealthy nations that spend less money on health care than the US.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;If you combine social services spending with health spending, the US and its peers spend about the same amount of money (a little more than 30 percent of their respective GDPs). But spending in those other countries is weighted more toward social support \u2014 food and housing subsidies, income assistance, etc. \u2014 whereas America spends more on medical care.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Eighteen percent of people in the US live in poverty, compared with 10 percent in other wealthy countries. And we know that people with lower incomes face many structural challenges \u2014 lack of access to healthy food, clean water, and fresh air, for starters \u2014 that lead to worse health outcomes. When they get sick, they have a harder time both finding a doctor and affording their medical care. In general, they also live with more stress and anxiety than people who make more money, which also has deleterious effects on their health.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/policy-and-politics\/22567034\/us-health-care-trends-social-determinants-of-health\">https:\/\/www.vox.com\/policy-and-politics\/22567034\/us-health-care-trends-social-determinants-of-health<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;There is an underappreciated contributor to the United States\u2019 comparatively poor health: We underinvest in social services that help people live healthier lives and therefore overspend on medical care relative to other developed countries.<\/p>\n<p>The long-term trends in US health care, as I wrote about earlier this week, tell a clear story: Medical outcomes have gotten better, with measures of life expectancy and disease burden improving over the last 25 years, but they haven\u2019t improved as much as they have in other wealthy nations that spend less money on health care than the US.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If you combine social services spending with health spending, the US and its peers spend about the same amount of money (a little more than 30 percent of their respective GDPs). But spending in those other countries is weighted more toward social support \u2014 food and housing subsidies, income assistance, etc. \u2014 whereas America spends more on medical care.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Eighteen percent of people in the US live in poverty, compared with 10 percent in other wealthy countries. And we know that people with lower incomes face many structural challenges \u2014 lack of access to healthy food, clean water, and fresh air, for starters \u2014 that lead to worse health outcomes. When they get sick, they have a harder time both finding a doctor and affording their medical care. In general, they also live with more stress and anxiety than people who make more money, which also has deleterious effects on their health.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[725,81,80,270,689,50,619,150],"class_list":["post-5869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-food","tag-health","tag-health-system","tag-housing","tag-international-comparisons","tag-medical","tag-united-states","tag-welfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5869"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5870,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5869\/revisions\/5870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}