I'm certain your mom, busy raising her family never considered herself nor worried the future would be so bleak. I think it's a sad commentary that people like your mother who gave so much should be at the mercy of a system that doesn't address her needs. In the meantime, medicos scam the system and running up enormous charges to line their pockets and whore for pharmaceuticals. sfgate.com Doctors in CA are suspected of performing unnecessary heart surgeries or probes on hundreds of patients.
I hope your mom's situation doesn't prevent her from getting medical attention when she needs it.
In CA in the meantime, 2.2 million people are struggling to feed themselves though they have jobs. More than 2.24 million low-income Californians cannot always put food on the table and one in three have experienced hunger, according to a new survey released Sunday.
Hunger and food shortages often are the result of job layoffs or illness and pose serious health risks, according to the California Health Information Survey conducted by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The survey found that statewide, 28 percent of adults who make more than $36,000 a year for a family of four -- that is, those earning twice the poverty level -- struggle to put food on the table.
The situation is so dire that many families are forced to put off paying the rent, utilities and medical care in order to eat.
"This groundbreaking survey shows that hard work is no guarantee against hard choices between food and housing," said Paul Ash, executive director of the San Francisco Food Bank. "Even families making more than $30,000 are having trouble affording the food they need due to the high cost of living."
In Los Angeles, about 777,000 people, or 30 percent of low-income households, live with the threat of hunger. In San Francisco, San Bernardino and Sonoma counties, 28 percent of households struggled to buy groceries.
The hardest-hit counties in the state included Tulare, Shasta and Fresno. Other counties with high rates of hunger included Sonoma, Solano, Marin and Napa.
The telephone survey of 55,428 households, conducted in six languages, is the largest health survey ever conducted in one state. The interviews were conducted between November 2000 and September 2001.
The survey found that poverty and hunger hit the most vulnerable populations, including: pregnant women, the elderly, undocumented residents and single-parent families. American Indians and natives of Alaska had the highest rates of hunger, followed by blacks and Hispanics.
The survey also found low enrollment in two federal programs designed to aid those in need: the federal Food Stamp welfare program and the Women, Infants and Children Special Supplemental Nutrition Program, which gives low-income pregnant women and their children access to food and prenatal care.
In California, 4.9 million low-income families are eligible for food stamps, but only 10 percent, or 496,000 people, receive them. Another 358,000 adults, or nearly 80 percent of those who live below poverty, were not enrolled in the Food Stamp program.
The researchers make several policy recommendations to eliminate hunger including: streamlining enrollment in federal programs and eliminating the practice of fingerprinting applicants in California, which some believe is deterring eligible people from applying. |
