$1.8 Mil Obamacare Grant to Promote Healthy Lifestyles for Minorities

To promote healthy lifestyles among minorities and low-income residents in the area surrounding the nation’s capital, the Obama administration has doled out nearly $2 million to, among other things, make fruits and vegetables available at work.

Compliments of Obamacare, the cash went to the municipal government of Washington D.C., according to a conservative news outlet that cites numbers from the federal agency—Centers for Disease Control (CDC)—that awards the money. The goal, according to the CDC, is to target “approximately 445,000 residents living in the District of Columbia, focusing on racial/ethnic minority, low-income, medically underserved and disabled communities.”

Officially it’s called a federal Community Transformation Grant and the feds are promoting the cash give-away as a worthy investment, under the president’s new healthcare overhaul, in community health. The money is also supposed to help implement environmental and infrastructure improvements to increase physical activity opportunities, reduce weight and tobacco use, improve nutrition and chronic disease outcomes. D.C. got $1.8 million and other cities around the nation have received tens of millions more to implement similar initiatives.  

Among D.C.’s plans for the money is to increase the “availability of fruit and vegetables to employees in their workplaces.” This just happens to coincide with Michelle Obama’s mission to conquer obesity in low-income and minority neighborhoods with government-subsidized farmers markets. In fact, the First Lady even got Congress to pass—and her husband to sign—a $4.5 billion law to accomplish the task.  

D.C.’s government will also spend some of its generous grant to increase “policies and practices to support breastfeeding in health care, community, workplaces, and learning and childcare settings.” Tobacco use will be curbed by increasing smoke-free, multi-unit housing (presumably taxpayer-funded public housing for the poor) and through yet-to-be determined “Tobacco Free Living Innovative Proposals.”

Under Obama the federal government has funded a number of costly programs in a variety of areas—including education, healthcare and nutrition—specifically targeting minorities. Among them is an $8.8 million program to train “underserved” Hispanic students to work for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), a series of cultural and linguistically appropriate healthcare initiatives for minorities and a $36.2 million study to improve minority “housing counseling.”