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Re:The Ugly Truth of Ugly Produce by TheSpiceIsLife on Saturday August 18, 2018 @05:33AM (#17787679)
$100 / person / month. $100B a year cost.

100,000,000,000 / 12 = would feed one person for 8.3B years.

Or a billion people for 8.3 years.

You can see where this is going.

$100B should be able to feed one hundred million people for 83.3 years. Assuming $100 / month could feed a person.

You can buy a lot of lentils, rice, and potatoes with $100.

But you're saying food stamps costs $100B a year.

Where is all this money going?

Re:The Ugly Truth of Ugly Produce by evan_ on Saturday August 18, 2018 @06:48AM (#17787910)
(I posted this before but made a mistake in the math, I think this is right now.)

The latest numbers in Wikipedia say that SNAP costs $70.9B and distributes an average of $125/month to 44.2M people.

That means the cost is $133 to distribute $125, or an overhead of $8 per person per month.

Still not great but not nearly as bad as I was expecting, to be honest.

Re:The Ugly Truth of Ugly Produce by berbec on Saturday August 18, 2018 @07:18AM (#17787993)
That actually does sound very bad. Even US health insurance companies, rightfully derided for profit mongering, manage to come in at single-digit overheads.
Re:The Ugly Truth of Ugly Produce by simulate on Saturday August 18, 2018 @08:44AM (#17788209)
The NIH estimates that the average person uses $316k ($419k in 2018 dollars) in health care spending over an 80 year life.[1][2]. That puts the value of health insurance at $5,237 per person per year.

The average health insurance deductible is $4,358 and the average premium is $321 per month.[3] That means that on average US citizens pay $321 per month for (5237-4358) / 12 = $73.25 of expected value. That's a 4X markup over the expected value of insurance.

Health insurance companies might be reporting single digit overheads but they are providing $1 of value for $4 and are inefficient.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361028/

[2] https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2017/11/05/when-your-shitty-...

[3] https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/06/23/heres-how-much-the-avera...

Re:The Ugly Truth of Ugly Produce by Felz on Saturday August 18, 2018 @10:53AM (#17788720)
> The average health insurance deductible is $4,358 and the average premium is $321 per month.[3] That means that on average US citizens pay $321 per month for (5237-4358) / 12 = $73.25 of expected value.

Your calculation makes no sense. Healthcare insurance pays out for catastrophic events, hence the deductible, not evenly every year. You need to know the distribution of payouts to get a meaningful result.

Re:The Ugly Truth of Ugly Produce by maxerickson on Saturday August 18, 2018 @08:58AM (#17788248)
Families in [3] are doing better than the individuals you use to calculate the multiple.

I guess it's still a whole number factor sort of thing.

I also wonder if those numbers are accounting for Medicare and Medicaid (which add costs to the private insurance system).

Re:The Ugly Truth of Ugly Produce by user5994461 on Saturday August 18, 2018 @10:07AM (#17788513)
Costs in the last 80 years are not representative of costs today or in the next 80 years.
Re:The Ugly Truth of Ugly Produce by simulate on Saturday August 18, 2018 @10:53AM (#17788718)
The NIH numbers quoted above didn't use costs over the past 80 years. They instead estimated current costs based on current demographics.

>> To estimate lifetime health care costs, we employ a method based on a current life table, also known as a period life table model.

Thus, these costs are representative of recent costs.

In the next 80 years, both the expected value of insurance and the cost of insurance will change. Health insurance premiums are expected to increase by double-digits in 2019.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/05/26/whos-ready-for-a-1...

Re:The Ugly Truth of Ugly Produce by taneq on Saturday August 18, 2018 @08:09AM (#17788117)
Wouldn't profit mongering result in a strong push for efficiency? Unless they count profits (or dividends) as 'overhead'...
Re:The Ugly Truth of Ugly Produce by justinsb on Saturday August 18, 2018 @06:46AM (#17787902)
I believe you forgot to divide by the $100
Re:The Ugly Truth of Ugly Produce by code_duck on Saturday August 18, 2018 @07:01AM (#17787937)
That is not a realistic or useful analysis of the economics of any food stamp program.
Re:The Ugly Truth of Ugly Produce by c-van-z on Saturday August 18, 2018 @01:49PM (#17789620)
There's a math error there. You divided $100 billion by 12 to get person-years, which would imply a cost of $12 per year.

$100 billion / 12 months

= $8.3 billion per month

/ $100 per person per month

= 83 million people

so $100 billion per year could give 83 million people $100 per month.

Re:The Ugly Truth of Ugly Produce by reitzensteinm on Saturday August 18, 2018 @09:48AM (#17788434)
$1000 should be able to feed a person for 83.3 years?