Cost for Meals on Wheels

According to Market Watch results of a study done in Oregon, the largest meals operation in the country states it costs $2500 for one year of a daily meal to feed a home-bound senior, or an invalid, or a disabled veteran, while it costs $60,000 a year to institutionalize that same person. The $2500 cost to keep those people at home is less than one day in a hospital. Those meals on wheels visits also provide a daily check on the home-bound, potentially saving a life. The graphic below shows the percentage of seniors in need of the program state by state. Note how many states that voted overwhelmingly for this president have a high percentage of people in need. When that percentage of seniors in need in those states are cut off, their care will fall to their grown children who voted for this president, should those grown children decide to do the right thing and take care of their senior parents.

According to Bloomberg News the president’s cuts to Meals on Wheels will not only harm seniors, but also over 500,000 veterans! One benefit of meals on wheels is keeping nutrition levels up for frail participants, that helps keep them from falling. Those falling accidents alone cost Medicare $31,000,000,000 in 2015.

So when the president and his budget chief Mick Mulvaney stand and say there is no benefit from programs including specifically meals on wheels, one wonders if they have any idea of how beneficial this one program is to seniors and to the veterans whom the president swore he would support “Bigly?”