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You tried so hard to make that sound bad but you just can’t. No strings attached money for expecting mothers? Excellent! Sounds fantastic!
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I think giving taxpayer money to anybody without basic checks is a bad idea and it will undoubtedly be exploited by people who don't need it or choose to spend it on the wrong things while neglecting their child's needs; I don't disagree with the idea of giving money to new families who actually need it.

If this received no taxpayer funding I wouldn't care, but when public funding is involved there need to be some checks to ensure no abuse, which Rx Kids doesn't have.

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Well there are basic checks? For one, you need to be having a baby.

All of the checks you listed would just serve to make it harder for this money to reach the mothers that need it.

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> All of the checks you listed would just serve to make it harder for this money to reach the mothers that need it.

In the same way seatbelts just serve to make it harder for drivers to get to where they need to go quickly. It would not be difficult to restrict this to people below a certain tax bracket.

It all comes down to how much public money (that could have been used to help people who need it) you're willing to accept the possibility of being defrauded for one person to get support a couple days sooner.

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How are you deciding which tax bracket someone is in? The most likely scenario is they look at your previous years filing, which would defeat the whole purpose of this program. If you read the website, you’ll see income drops significantly prior to the baby being born.

Means testing often leaves out those on the lower end who straddle the line or get excluded by stupid technicalities. You simply can’t account for every scenario. Excluding any mother means you will exclude someone who needs it.

I would honestly love a national program that gives money to every mother automatically no questions asked.

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>In the same way seatbelts just serve to make it harder for drivers to get to where they need to go quickly

?

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Putting on a seatbelt adds a negligible 3 second delay to get where you need to go in exchange for a valuable addition to safety.
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I'd rather see a few people abuse this rather than having more barriers up for the people who need this assistance.
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I suppose it's about finding a balance. I understand not having unreasonable amounts of repetitive checks, but if you make it too easy to abuse more than a few people will abuse it, which takes away money from the people who need it.
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Oh no, people who need assistance might get assistance, even if we haven't tried to look for a reason not to help them first?! What a disaster!
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> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I've already discussed this in a separate reply.

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