Standard Medical Deduction And SNAP Enrollment In the August issue of Health Affairs, Jun Li and his colleagues at Syracuse explore the impact of the adoption of the standard medical deduction (SMD) – a policy designed to "decrease administrative barriers and improve access to SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] benefits for households with older adults and households with people with disabilities."
Li and colleagues find that the adoption of SMD was associated with a 20.62 percent increase in the number of SMD-eligible households in SNAP. They also find an increase in the share of SMD-eligible households enrolled in SNAP.
These results suggest that the SMD is an "effective tool" to increase SNAP enrollment.
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