Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Stereotypes take a hit


So much for the myth that farmers and rural businessmen are the bedrock of honesty and that slum dwellers are cheats.

It turns out that crop insurance fraud rates are far higher than food-stamp program cheating in the United States.

Democratic congressman Colin Peterson from Minnesota says “there is five times as much fraud” in the federal crop insurance program as there is the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program.
“There is less fraud in food stamps than in any government program,” Peterson told the National Journal on April 10.
“There is five times as much fraud in crop insurance than in food stamps.”
US. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack also commented recently.
“There’s also an issue we’re taking very seriously on crop insurance – because the percentage of error and fraud rate is higher in crop insurance than it is in SNAP,” Vilsack said.

“Obviously those programs are different in terms of size – but even if you reduce the error rate in crop insurance, you’re talking about tens of millions, and potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in savings as well.”

In the United States, crop insurance is delivered via private insurance companies which are heavily subsidized by the federal government.

In Canada, crop insurance is either delivered directly by provincial governments or by agencies, such as Agricorp in Ontario, that have been set up by the province.