The United States Agency of International Development (USAID) helped prevent roughly 1 million child deaths per year. Other U.S. foreign assistance programs have also saved many lives, and under President Obama, the State Department used diplomacy with the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, China and the European Union to help negotiate the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement.

“Food is Medicine” programs are nongovernmental and operate in roughly a dozen states, serving people with chronic diseases who also face food insecurity. Many provide a medically tailored 30-pound box of food per person every two weeks. Generally following this model, a diet could be created for the 42 million SNAP participants with a 15-30-pound comprehensive food staple box, while beverages could be purchased with an EBT card.

This food-staple box could be prepared for pick-up by a store such as Walmart and might cost $55 billion per year, whereas the SNAP “food choice” budget for 2026 is $101 billion. SNAP could also provide easy-to-understand multilingual cooking videos for cellphones.

This could be a long-term benefit for the MaineCare budget; as many as 40% of SNAP recipients are obese, 35% are overweight and some of the food they are currently buying using the new USDA/DHHS system still has little nutritional value. 

The remaining part of the SNAP budget, $50 billion, could be used to restore the above programs.

John Kirk
Gorham