The US is two different countries, with two different approaches to health care

[eridani]

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/108185/blue-states-are-scandinavia-red-states-are-guatemala?wpisrc=nl_wonk#

In all kinds of real and practical ways, the United States today is not one nation, but two.

By nearly every measure, people who live in the blue states are healthier, wealthier, and generally better off than people in the red states. It's impossible to prove that this is the direct result of government spending.

But the correlation is hard to dismiss. The four states with the highest poverty rates are all red: Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and Texas. (The fifth is New Mexico, which has turned blue.) And the five states with the lowest poverty rates are all blue: New Hampshire, New Jersey, Vermont, Minnesota, and Hawaii. The numbers on infant mortality, life expectancy, teen pregnancy, and obesity break down in similar ways.

Advocates for the red-state approach to government invoke lofty principles: By resisting federal programs and defying federal laws, they say, they are standing up for liberty. These were the same arguments that the original red-staters made in the 1800s, before the Civil War, and in the 1900s, before the Civil Rights movement. Now, as then, the liberty the red states seek is the liberty to let a whole class of citizens suffer. That's not something the rest of us should tolerate. This country has room for different approaches to policy. It doesn't have room for different standards of human decency.

Miss. says no thanks to Medicaid expansion dollars

http://picayuneitem.com/statenews/x699448824/Miss-says-no-thanks-to-Medicaid-expansion-dollars

Mississippi has long been one of the sickest and poorest states in America,with some of the highest rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease and more than 1 in 7 residents without insurance. And so you might think Mississippi would jump at the prospect of billions of federal dollars to expand Medicaid.

You'd be wrong.

Leaders of the deeply conservative state say that even if Mississippi receives boatloads of cash under President Barack Obama?s health care law, it can?t afford the corresponding share of state money it will have to put up to add hundreds of thousands of people to the government health insurance program for the poor.

Commentby Don McCanne of PNHP: One strategy in the Affordable Care Act that was introduced to help cover everyone was to expand the Medicaid program for low-income individuals. To encourage state participation, the federal government would pay the full costs of care for three years and then taper down to 90 percent, leaving the states responsible for only 10 percent of the costs. Yet Governors Bryant, Scott, Jindal, Deal, Haley, and Perry have rejected the program, decisions which will surely leave many otherwise qualified individuals with no coverage.

Those of us who supported single payer reform - an improved Medicare for all - warned repeatedly that the model enacted in the Affordable Care Act could never cover everyone. Current predictions are that 30 million people will remain uninsured (CBO).

This is shocking and fills with grief those of us who have been fighting so long and hard for health care justice in America. It is worth repeating the last paragraph in Jonathan Cohn's article because he states it so well:

Advocates for the red-state approach to government invoke lofty principles: By resisting federal programs and defying federal laws, they say, they are standing up for liberty. These were the same arguments that the original red-staters made in the 1800s, before the Civil War, and in the 1900s, before the Civil Rights movement. Now, as then, the liberty the red states seek is the liberty to let a whole class of citizens suffer. That's not something the rest of us should tolerate. This country has room for different approaches to policy. It doesn't have room for different standards of human decency.

[Angry Dragon]

1. and they also get back much more money than they pay in to federal dollars

[colsohlibgal]

2. No Doubt

We do have the best health care in the world - if money is no object. Otherwise here the #1 cause of bankruptcy is medical bills and that is morally wrong and not the case in about every other nation.

Nobody should be ruined financially because they had the bad form to get cancer of be in an accident.

[zingrr]

3. FL Gov Rick Scott purging disabled from Medicaid

Wingnut Scott is purging an avg. of 3000 100% disabled adults between the ages of 18-64 from the Medicaid rolls each month. Avg. cost per disable adult is $100,000 a yr.

3000 x $100,000 =$300,000,000 savings = 3000 deaths