Exchange Our Food Stamp Program for Welfare Stores?
Posted 02-03-2016 at 02:04 PM by Blondebaerde
Quote:
Originally Posted by Javacoffee
Recently there was a welfare fraud bust in a nearby rural small town. The entire investigation went on for over a year before the cops rolled up and arrested the store owners and employees who were selling welfare recipients illegal products, and paying 70-cents on the dollar for SNAP cards. I'd like to know what this Big Bust cause the taxpayers, but nobody is admitting anything. I'm sure the bill is much higher than the actual fraud.
The welfare system is too easily scammed. So, why do we continue to use it.
I'd like to hear some ideas on how people would change it. We all complain about it, but never offer solutions.
The welfare system is too easily scammed. So, why do we continue to use it.
I'd like to hear some ideas on how people would change it. We all complain about it, but never offer solutions.
(Suggestion by OP: local stores only, each maintaining SNAP user data): I wouldn't trust a local store to keep any computer system "up to date" with anything, as an IT professional I've observed half my clients couldn't keep their zipper updated after using the bathroom. Nor, with cloud computers, do people need to be geographically limited to some specific store in a given neighborhood. That's 1990s thinking with far too many break points.
Who knows: some day I may be on these programs, too. Life has taught me, by middle age, to "never say never" to most things that are possible vs. literally impossible. So I won't suggest much that I'd not be willing to do myself, to preserve the dignity of recipients:
Government-funded programs mean government level databases, presumably at the State level. That's well within technical capabilities to assign SNAP recipients with budget limits and item limits. I'd eliminate a "card" entirely and key it off fingerprint readers plus PIN, tech my cell phone currently uses (dual authentication that seems reasonably secure to validate I am...me).
So: Blondebaerde goes on welfare, and is issued SNAP benefits, managed via some sort of website. Great. That's all stored online, including all the financials: transactions, balances, etc. I login with PIN and fingerprint (easy). There are my benefits, and a line-item list of what I'm allowed to purchase under the program.
Transactions at the store, verified through same authentication process, make debits tracked online in the cloud server. Items either can, or cannot, be purchased when they are scanned at the checkout. Valid, or invalid, on a line item basis right there at the store. Checkout again via fingerprint and PIN.
That isn't rocket science, btw. Stores already track their own coupons, rewards programs, etc. nationally.
There are ways to game the above, too, but removing a physical object that can be monetized (a SNAP "card") will cut down the fraud by some percentage. Step 1 was welfare checks, which is long gone (I assume). Cards are the next evolution. Those can now be tossed away, now that Cloud access is ubiquitous.
The Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) website debacle of c. 2013 clearly showed that 1) Contractors to the government are not held to performance standards like private industry, apparently? 2) private industry could help design such a site, and cloud databases, up and running in half a year if not sooner 3) privacy concerns and politics would rear their respective ugly heads during review periods...
The above is inevitable, by the way. As it should be. I have observed technological changes are typically driven by disruptors, then foiled by Luddites resistant to change, then eventually accepted as normal course of business. We're strange creatives, us humans.
