Health Care Spending Vs. Social Service Spending

Preparing yesterday’s piece on the question of housing and health care expenses raised the question, “does housing = health care” (see Is Housing Health Care?)? But it also brought into focus the question of spending on health care versus spending on social services.

First was President Clinton’s head of Medicaid and Medicare, Bruce Vladeck’s assertion that people need housing – it just should be paid for as a social service. He said, “It’s not cost-effective….Medicaid is supposed to be health insurance, and not every problem somebody has is a health care problem.” Then there was the . . .