Reports from the "Clarity in Choices Department" will be a new recurring feature on our blog. We'll use it to highlight some of the tradeoffs Texas faces as decision-makers cope with a financial crisis. Our goal is to move from the fuzzy jargon of politics (like "10% budget reduction") to something a little easier to understand (like "vaccines for 112,000 children"). In these posts, we'll also puzzle through the costs for Texas the way we wish more leaders would. (For example: "If it costs more in unnecessary health spending due to sicknesses and hospitalizations, does eliminating child vaccines to save money really make sense?”)
First up are two issues our policy staff members have recently testified about: early childhood services and childhood obesity prevention.
Early Childhood Intervention (ECI) services allow very young children, under age 3, with disabilities and developmental delays to access supports they need to get ahead. The state gets some federal money to operate ECI, but not enough to keep up with demand. Now Texas is weighing a change in its eligibility rules, so that fewer families with infants and toddlers in need of services will qualify for the program. Of course, the number of children with disabilities and developmental delays won't decline (in fact, sadly, those numbers are rising), so the choice Texas faces is not between paying for ECI and paying nothing. Rather, it is between adequately funding early intervention or choosing to pay far more when challenges are left to fester.
As Josette Saxton, our mental health policy associate, explained to the Legislative Budget Board:
Failure to invest in ECI will lead not only to poorer child outcomes but to increased long-term costs to the public, as these children reenter public systems with greater delays and problem severity …likely at an increased cost and intensity of service. Research shows that most of the dollar benefits of early childhood interventions are reaped by society in reduced public spending in other systems.
Just as Texas has nothing to gain--and, in fact, much to lose--from ignoring early developmental warning signs, Texas can also be penny-wise and pound-foolish in regard to children's health. For example, our Policy Director Jodie Smith explained to the Senate Health and Human Services Committee today, that funds dedicated to the prevention of child obesity are needed to address a coming financial crisis:
Many doctors believe that addressing childhood obesity is key to reversing obesity trends in the population at large--and, economists say, states and businesses need such a reversal to avoid dire costs. About 70 percent of overweight children grow up to be overweight or obese adults. If no action is taken, the rate of obesity among working-age Texans will jump from 29 percent today to 43 percent in a generation. The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts says this increase will cost Texas businesses $15.8 billion by 2025 (up from $3.3 billion today).
In her testimony, Jodie offers several proven, cost-effective strategies that would help reverse obesity and its toll on communities. Once again, Texas can go one of two ways: toward inaction, with its very steep price tag, or toward resolving a Texas problem, so the forecast for tomorrow gets a little brighter.
We encourage you to carry the message to your lawmakers, in case they get fuzzy about their choices: a dollar taken away from childhood obesity prevention or ECI costs our state more than it saves.
