Human Services and Our Obsession With Fraud

There is an interesting post by former Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser on the Governing Institute Blog this week. It focuses on the balance of preventing fraud in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and meeting the needs of hungry Americans. It raises the question: How much are we willing to spend to prevent ineligible people from receiving benefits and will we miss the goal of the program in the process?

The author points out that SNAP has done extraordinarily well given the rising tide of poverty. Moreover, the complexity of SNAP's eligibility rules and the diversity of household situations has placed front line human services workers under increasing scrutiny. Error rates are also at an all time low. He urges us to circle back to the goal of the programs and focus on the most important outcomes.

But we can't have it both ways. We're going to have to decide whether we are willing to allow a few ineligibles to slip through the system as part of the price of assuring that more than 20 million low-income children have enough to eat.

Click here to read the entire blog post.