Government Role Paper Karmen Rubin ...

Government Role Paper
Karmen Rubin
University of Louisiana at Monroe
The government plays an important role in healthcare and is vital to the future of healthcare systems. Healthcare systems offer many opportunities to the citizens of the United States and provide many advances for them. The Special Supplement Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children or WIC, provides low- income women and their children up to the age five with nutritious foods, healthy diets, and referrals to healthcare. The U.S. Department of Agriculture or USDA stated that the most important service that the WIC program provides is vouchers for woman and children to use at authorized food stores. These vouchers are funded by the Federal government.
Some ways the government helps with the development of the WIC program is by reimbursing stores with WIC food purchases every year and paying for counseling education provided by WIC agencies in every state. With the cost of food rising, the federal government recently gave 150 million dollars from an emergency fund to help manage the growing demand for food products (Federal News Service, 2009). By the year 2010 the WIC program will receive a total of 500 million dollars. 400 million will be used to support the cost or participation if the government should exceed the estimated budget. A hundred million will be used to improve WIC management and information systems. The processing of these funds was signed off by President Obama on Feb. 17, 2009 under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (USDA). Another way the government has help keep the program at a less costly level is by reducing the amount of juice, milk, cheese, and eggs that can be purchased (The Press- Enterprise, 2008). Currently there are changes being made to the WIC program that involve making better nutritional food choices for participants. One new change is said to allow the purchase of fresh fruit, vegetables, whole- grain and soy bean products. The change is expected to bring about healthy diets for all children at an early age and is predicted to help put a stop to rising obesity rates in the U.S. In the end this change could actually save the government money in the cost of healthcare (Plotkin, 2009).
The government works though many other programs to continue to influence the WIC program and the future of the program. One program that the government works through is the Food and Nutrition Information Center (FNIC). The mission of the FNIC is to collect information about food and human nutrition. The FNIC serves many communities by providing them with reliable food and nutrition resources from the government and non- government sources. Another advantage the government offers to the WIC program is better access to grants. A website called, grants.gov, provides different grants that applicants can register and apply for online. The website also has valuable information about the grantors and what services they offer. Finally ...