Despite being a leading county in the amount of accumulated wealth, the U.S. defaults drastically on the efficacy of care to its citizens, especially senior ones (Fox-Grade & Ujvari, 2019; Bloncato, 2014). Reports show that political choices made in the context of the U.S. environment are to blame for the specified issue (Schneider, Sarnak, Squires, Shah, & Doty, 2019; U.S. Department of Transportation, 2019). Some of the reforms that have been made in the past few decades have proven to have severe side effects for senior citizens (U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2019; National Association of Area Agencies on Aging, 2019). Idaho’s SSI Policy, which has affected the lives of the aging rural Idaho population, is one of them (Ackley, 2000). Due to the decision to reduce expenses by providing aging people with disabilities living in the rural area with Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program based on very biased criteria for qualifying as poor, a range of disabled people in Idaho fails to receive essential healthcare services, which has an especially harmful impact on the aging population..
The policy in question states that the SSI program can only be provided if one lives beyond a specific poverty threshold calculated for each family individually. However, without the consideration of crucial economic and financial factors that make the amount of money identified by the state authorities excruciatingly small, determining the number of resources that an individual needs to keep the quality of life at a decent level are barely impossible (Hash, Jurkowski, & Krout, 2015; Health Resources and Services Administration, 2019). The policy, however, does not allow addressing each problem on a case-by-case basis, which increases the vulnerability of aging people in Idaho. To manage this situation, state authorities will need to develop the program and an appropriate toolkit such as the Rural Tobacco Control and Prevention Toolkit for reaching out and offering assistance to aging people living in rural areas (Rural Health Information Hub, n.d.a; Rural Health Information Hub, n.d.b; National Organization of State Offices of Rural Health, n.d.).
References
Ackley, K. (2000). Idaho’s SSI policy: Penalizing the poor and disabled. Web.
Bloncato, B. (2014).Aging in rural places – Part 10, rural elders and health care reform. Web.
Fox-Grade, W., & Ujvari, K. (2019). The Older Americans Act. Web.
Hash, K. M., Jurkowski, E. T., & Krout, J. A. (2015). Aging in rural places. New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company, LLC.
Health Resources and Services Administration. (2019).About FORHP. Web.
National Association of Area Agencies on Aging. (2019). 2019 policy priorities. Web.
National Organization of State Offices of Rural Health. (n.d.). NOSORH members. Web.
Rural Health Information Hub. (n.d.a). Rural health promotion and disease prevention toolkit. Web.
Rural Health Information Hub. (n.d.b). Rural tobacco control and prevention toolkit. Web.
Schneider, E. C., Sarnak, D. O., Squires, D., Shah, A., & Doty, M. M. (2019). The United States health system falls short. (2019). Web.
U.S. Department of Agriculture. (2019). Housing for Individuals. Web.
U.S. Department of Transportation. (2019). Rural public transportation systems. Web.