Increasing SNAP error rates could be good news for Florida (really)

Filed 2h ago · Via Florida Phoenix · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Rijksmuseum · CC0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Florida's unofficial SNAP payment error rate for the current federal fiscal year has climbed to 14.49%, up from 12.97% the year before, and comfortably above the national average of 10.62%. Northeast Florida leads the pack at 19.3%. These are the state's own numbers, filed by the Department of Children and Families in its September outlook to lawmakers.

Under the 2025 federal law that ended full federal funding of SNAP, states with high error rates get a reprieve from cost-sharing penalties, in Florida's case potentially pushing a $1 billion bill from 2027 all the way to 2030. Florida's economists are explicit that clearing the 13.33% threshold is what buys the delay. Meanwhile enrollment has dropped by roughly 685,000 people in a year, and the errors, officials note, are mistakes rather than fraud, which is a fine distinction to make to someone denied benefits by accident.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

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You have to admire the arithmetic here: mess up more applications and the state gets rewarded with a longer grace period before it has to pay for its own program. That is a little like a driver hoping for a few extra fender benders so the insurance company waits longer to raise the rates. Nobody designed this to punish accuracy, but it sure does not encourage anybody to fix it either.

Source: Read the original at Florida Phoenix → Scored: Merry Go Slower · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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