In three days, a change mandated by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R. 1) will take effect, bringing additional cost and administrative burden to state and local governments and putting more seniors and others facing food insecurity at greater risk.
That risk among seniors has been rising for decades.
Big, But Not So Beautiful
“With H.R. 1, there are fewer individuals who can participate in programs like SNAP and others,” Uche Akobundu, Nutrition Strategy and Impact Senior Director at Meals on Wheels America, told SavingAdvice, “so that just creates a compounding situation for seniors who are food insecure.”
“H.R. 1 did two things that shifted costs to the states,” Crystal FitzSimons, President of the Food Research & Action Center (FRAC), told SavingAdvice. “Before H.R. 1, states were required to cover 50% of administrative costs and the federal government covered 50%. So, now states are responsible for 75% and the federal government’s responsible for 25%.
“The other thing that they did was require states, for the first time ever, to start paying some of the benefit costs if their error rates are high.”
More Or Less To Come
States with error rates above 6% will have to pay a percentage of SNAP benefits beginning October 1 next year. Only eight states had error rates below 6% as of 2024.
“Error rates are basically kind of these administrative mistakes that happen within the state,” explains FitzSimons. “It’s not fraud.”
Maryland serves as an example of how these changes will impact state budgets, according to Forward, a national public-benefit and management platform.
Shifting to the 75-25 administrative split will drive up Maryland’s annual costs by $58 million. Furthermore, failing to cut its current error rate will leave Maryland liable for an extra $240 million in cost-sharing starting next fiscal year.
The National Governors Association (NGA), along with other state and local organizations, asked Congress in January to push enactment of the changes back to fiscal year 2030. They cited the complexity of instituting a major policy shift without full federal guidance and the federal government’s record shutdown.
H.R. 1 mandated that state and local governments implement policy changes by July 4, 2025. However, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) did not complete the official implementation guidance until October 2025. That meant that many states had to make changes they adopted in July because they conflicted with the federal guidance that came out six months later.
On top of that, the federal government shut down for a record 43 days from October 1 to November 13, 2025, further delaying additional federal guidance.
Program Changes Pushing Food Insecurity Higher
“So, states are working very hard to try and bring their error rates down and the way it’s playing out is that it is getting harder for people to access SNAP in some states and we are seeing drops in participation because of that,” says FitzSimons.
“That decrease is part of a long trend of increasing food insecurity among seniors,” according to Akobundu.
“The most recent data that we have for food insecurity is about 10% of households with an adult age 65 or older experienced food insecurity in 2024 and then about 11.3% of households where people over 65 live alone experienced food insecurity and those rates have been steadily climbing over the last 20 years,” says FitzSimons.
Feds Eliminating Reports On Senior Food Insecurity
“The reason that I can report to you that there are 2.5 million food insecure, low income seniors that are not being served is that there were national surveys that allowed us to know that,” says Akobundu. “Now, those surveys at the national level have been terminated, so we will have even less insight into this number that is already an undercount.”
The latest government information on senior food insecurity is from 2024.
“The USDA actually announced last year that they would end the food security measure, and so that is actually an annual measure that they put out, which tells you how many households were food insecure. How many individuals lived in those households,” says FitzSimons. “So, yeah, they’re ending that data. It’s a huge problem. It makes it very difficult for us to understand what is going on in families across the country and how people are struggling, and then it also hides the impact of H.R. 1, the budget reconciliation law that was passed in July 2025, which made significant cuts to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program staff.
“We are seeing that about 5.2 million people (of all ages) have lost SNAP benefits since that bill was passed.”
Recertification Problems
Administrative hurdles routinely strip eligible, food-insecure seniors of their SNAP benefits and force them to reapply—a process known as churn.
“So, a lot of things are happening in states as well, where you know it’s getting harder for people to document and to get through the application process,” says FitzSimons. “Older adults already participate in SNAP at lower rates than they should because of application barriers and stigma.”
A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) reported that most of those who lose benefits during the recertification process successfully reapply. That led to the conclusion that “the administrative burden associated with SNAP recertification leads to decreases in program participation.”
Even the USDA determined in its own study that removing annual recertification and interviews increases seniors’ participation in SNAP.
Cutting Costs and Obstacles
“We have a couple of specific recommendations for states to lower churn for older adults,” says FitzSimons. “They include simplifying the recertification process; enhancing the administrative system, data transparency, enhancing customer service and investing in staff.”
Specifically, FitzSimons recommends recertifying older adults every three years. The Elderly Simplified Application Project makes that recertification change and adds more flexibility.
Meals on Wheels Has Its Own Challenges
Meals on Wheels does not have the governmental red tape to navigate. It has a cost of operations challenge.
“Rising costs and growing needs, as we speak, are forcing programs to stretch their resources to a breaking point,” says Akobundu. “They have to place folks on a waiting list for lifesaving meals. We know that one in three Meals on Wheels providers has a waiting list and that these seniors are waiting an average of four months (on waiting lists) for meals they desperately need. So, the 2.5 million seniors that are food insecure are not being served.”
Akobundu states that unserved, food-insecure seniors must make stark choices about their living expenses.
“If you are concerned about how you would access the meals that you need, that’s just an indicator of the other issues in the household that are being contended with,” says Akobundu. “If you’re concerned about your food intake, then certainly you would be asking questions about money that can be spent on other life supporting activities like taking medications, like heating your home, those become the trade-offs.”
Senior Food Insecurity And Health
A lack of proper nutrition damages the health of seniors, according to Akobundu.
“Seniors facing food insecurity report three or more days a month of being in poor physical health and poor mental health compared to those who are food secure,” she says. “Individuals who have food insecurity are three times more likely to have depression. They are more likely to have gum disease or more likely to have asthma, more likely to have diabetes, more likely to have congestive heart failure or even experience a heart attack. So there are many challenges certainly to one’s physical and cognitive health around being food insecure.”
Senior Food Insecurity And Healthcare Costs
Food insecurity also takes a toll on the healthcare system.
“For food security across all ages, there’s an estimated cost of about $105 billion a year in terms of health care. That’s just for individuals who are food insecure, regardless of age,” says Akobundu. “Imagine if we’re able to address that, we would save $100 billion potentially in the health care industry.”
Akobundu says community programs, such as Meals on Wheels, provide a good return on investment for participants and healthcare.
“The power of Meals on Wheels programs is so impactful because seniors can be served for a full year for about the cost of one day in a hospital or 12 days at a long-term care facility. So I’m just putting that into perspective. The cheapest place to be is at home being served and supported by community programs that can provide good service to seniors. That’s a pretty good return on investment.”
FitzSimons agrees that feeding seniors in need helps reduce healthcare costs, but feels government policy does not support that.
“SNAP is our most effective anti-hunger program. It improves health; it reduces healthcare costs,” says FitzSimons. “It helps families stretch their food budget and their household budget. We should be doing everything we can to make sure older adults who are eligible for SNAP are able to participate. We have low participation rates among older adults and the benefits SNAP provides are absolutely critical to helping them make ends meet. So, we are going in the wrong direction here.”
What to Read Next
8 SNAP Rules Older Americans Should Double-Check Before Their Next Recertification
SNAP Enrollment Is Falling Faster Than Expected — Here’s What’s Happening in Each State
7 Household Expenses SNAP Applicants Should Make Sure They Report
Read the full article here
