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As the Trump administration continues to push back on court orders to fully fund SNAP, health experts are warning about the potential impacts if some 600,000 Coloradans who rely on the program are unable to put food on the table.

Lindsey Haynes-Maslow, professor of health policy and management at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said not knowing where your next meal will come from produces poor health outcomes and those costs are passed along to taxpayers.

"We’re going to pay for this either now, or we’re going to pay for it later," Haynes-Maslow asserted. "We can invest in food and prevention, or we can pay for it later in the most expensive way to access our health care system in this country, which is going to the ER."

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Lack of access to nutritious food comes with a price tag of $50 billion per year, according to one Harvard study, accounting for nearly 20 percent of all U.S. health care costs.

Six in 10 Americans enrolled in SNAP are either children younger than18 or adults 60 and older. Children living in food-insecure households are two to three times more likely to delay or forgo necessary medical, dental, and mental health care.

More than half of all families with children receiving SNAP benefits include at least one employed adult.

Diane Schanzenbach, professor of public policy at Georgetown University, said most low-income families have fixed monthly costs and frequently have to make difficult decisions between paying for food, medicines or their utility bills.

"You can’t negotiate with your landlord and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to not use the second bathroom this month. Can we have a reduction on our rent?’" Schanzenbach pointed out. "There’s just not that much slack that families have in their budget where they could pare back."

Last week a federal court ordered the Trump administration to pay full November SNAP benefits for 42 million low-income people in Colorado and across the U.S. during the government shutdown. Colorado officials said 32,000 SNAP participants received benefits before the U.S. Supreme Court put a temporary hold on the lower court’s ruling.

On Saturday, the Trump administration ordered states to claw back those payments. Benefits remain blocked for 560,000 Coloradans enrolled in the program.