Giving cash to poor people could result in fewer emergency department visits, a new study suggests.
The study published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association looked at almost 2,900 low-income people who applied for a lottery in the Boston suburb of Chelsea, Massachusetts. Nearly 1,750 of them got up to $400 per month from November 2020 to August 2021.
The researchers then looked at health records and found that those who received the money had 27% fewer visits an emergency room in the nine-month period compared with those who didn’t receive the monthly payments.
“We can trust the poor with money,” said co-author Dr. Sumit Agarwal, a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “There’s this narrative out there that you give people cash and they spend it on drugs and alcohol. I think we’re one of the first studies to really rigorously and empirically show that’s not the case.”
“We can trust the poor with money,” said co-author Dr. Sumit Agarwal, a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “There’s this narrative out there that you give people cash and they spend it on drugs and alcohol. I think we’re one of the first studies to really rigorously and empirically show that’s not the case.”
Every single study has shown that the lie about how they will spend all the money on drugs and alcohol is a fucking lie intended to demonize the poor.
Of course, if you don’t trust the poor to use the money you give them appropriately, you could always just give them healthcare instead.
Healthcare for everyone? You’re talking nonsense.
I know, I’m sorry. How will people learn not to get sick if you just give them healthcare? It’s crazy talk.
One self employed carpenter died of cancer because he hadn’t been able to get a check up for years.
If he’d been able to do have regular checkups he might have survived.
Is that a threat?
“We can trust the poor with money,” said co-author Dr. Sumit Agarwal
No the fuck you can’t! If you give money to the poor, they’ll have the means to pull themselves out of poverty and then they won’t be one of “the poor.” And then what??? /s
Also: people who can’t afford boots don’t have bootstraps to pull themselves up
