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Notes -
In China, a lot of the insurance system covers Traditional Chinese Medicine, which is pretty much just bullshit. Here in the US, I know people who have gotten chiropractic coverage under their own insurance. Acupuncture is also something apparently covered by many private insurance companies, despite also being highly suspect. Some apparently are even covering Reiki now.
Point here being that interest groups who believe they're effective push hard for their inclusion and treatment as "real medicine" and there's not really a strong lobby against it. It's not like you'll gonna be able to convince the TCM/Chiropractic/Acupuncture/Reiki/etc believers otherwise that easily after all, they're passionate and committed in a way that opposition isn't. If you have a bunch of people who really think that crystals or halo therapy or whatever are better than normal mainstream medicine, then you have a lobby pushing for their inclusion.
So in the same way, there's a whole load of highly motivated people who basically consider this sort of thing as the only real and healthy food there is. Heck even the head of the HHS now isn't that far gone, but he's a lot closer to that viewpoint than I ever will be. Even from the perspective of an EBT user, spending on those mushrooms instead of something else makes no sense unless you truly believe that they have some sort of meaningful benefits to them. They're at the store because people buy them and people buy them despite the cost because they believe it does something worth it.
Because there's a bunch of very very passionate people in support, I don't expect coverage of such products to end anytime soon in the same way that coverage of (what I consider to be bullshit) "traditional medicine" and other beliefs is being actively expanded by insurances. It's just part of living in society, sometimes you have to accommodate what you personally think is bullshit because large numbers of people believe it.
You might think "well just ban things that are stupid and bad" but the monkey paw curls and Whole Foods non GMO gluten free food and other stuff like that are the only things allowed to take EBT anymore. Whoops, turns out other people have different views on what is stupid and bad.
To be fair to the mushroom lady, although it probably would have been better had she bought real mushrooms, at least she was buying perceived benefits for physical health vegetables rather than trying to get cigarettes and alcohol off the food stamps. That at least is some kind of effort to get healthy or improve herself. I do think those 'superfoods' are gimmicks and rackets, but if it's a choice between "buy tiny expensive packet of dubious health benefit" or "giant snack food bags", then the mushrooms win.
I wish I were that motivated! (she said, hastily closing the bag of potato chips).
To be even more fair, she may well be selling her whole cart at 50% to spend the money on drugs.
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