Reimbursing for lodging and meals by submitting a receipt at a later date is not the same thing as taking stranded customers out of the airport to a hotel and giving them food vouchers. There are plenty of people who have been stuck sleeping in airports because they can not afford to pay peak walk-up holiday rates for 4 or 5 days. Those people are sleeping at the airport. This is happening in Denver, Austin, Midway etc. The news media is chock full full of these no lodging horror stories.

Further Southwest famously does not have interline or code sharing agreements with other carriers that would allow their agents to rebook passengers on a different airline. This is yet another detail of Southwest operations that is exacerbating the situation.