This isn’t a big surprise, obviously:
Nationally, about 15 percent of Americans lack health insurance. But in the North, many states in addition to Massachusetts have less than 11 percent uninsured. They include Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Michigan, New Hampshire, Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota. In the South and the West, where small businesses dominate, many states other than Texas have more than 17 percent, including Arizona, Florida, California, Louisiana, Georgia, Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Nevada and New Mexico.
The disparities extend to the value of employer-provided benefits. It is highest in the Northeast and the Midwest, lowest in the South and the West.
That means a big regional slant if the plan raises money by ending the tax exemption for employer health benefits or by taxing the value of above-average benefits, which is what Congress is leaning toward.
Update. I should note that this article is ten months old. But I think it is likely that there will eventually be a tax on a good portion of employer-provided health benefits.
Linda Featheringill
When the folks in the red states in the south start enjoying their medical care, do you think they will remember who it was that got it for them?
Or will they take all they can get and then bitterly criticize Obama’s administration?
Wouldn’t it be nice if the repubs really did campaign on repeal of HCR?
The Grand Panjandrum
This article is from May 09 so it isn’t quite right. Some of those taxes were delayed in the negotiations with the unions but yes in the end the states with the highest percentages of people covered with good plans will be supporting those who live in states that have fewer of those plans.
Yutsano
@ TGP:
How many federal programs say that now though? Virtually all. Where’s that chart that shows how blue states pay more in federal monies than they get back and red states take out more? What made anyone think HCR would be any different on that front?
ds
The fury over the Medicaid expansions is very revealing.
Under the new law, the federal government is going to pick up 90% of the costs of covering millions of poor people who were previously excluded by stingy state Medicaid programs, and all you hear is angry bitching from the red states about having to pick up the other 10%.
When it comes to federal funding, if you can get a 90% match for anything, a state or local entity is always overjoyed. It’s a great deal. The extra funding will boost the local economy, making it trivial to come up with the local share.
There are dozens of “highways to nowhere” being built in this country at this moment, based on that fact. The states didn’t even really want the new highways, but since they can get an 80% federal match, why the hell not? It’ll help the economy.
But, ew, that Medicaid money will go to help poor people, and even black people. Shudder. WE HAVE TO FIGHT IT IN COURT.
Violet
No, they will not. Republicans will take credit. People will give Republicans credit.
Dems should realize this and develop a strong message as to just who it is who brought health care to the people. I’m not holding my breath on that one, though. Dems suck at messaging.
Warren Terra
One more case of the wealthier, more educated, more enlightened parts of the country forcing benefits and subsidies down the throat of the South and Mountain West, who will never acknowledge it.
Jim Pharo
Doug, the entire federal government is regionally tilted, from the political representation in the White House and Senate to the net debtor/creditor status of individual states and even counties. It’s primary purpose, in fact, is the redistribution of wealth from some people to other people, and givers and takers tend to be geographically bunched.
Silly!
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
If you can’t cope with the notion that Uncle Sam can shower people with lavish support for local infrastrucure and yet somehow they come to hate DC, then don’t read about the regional history of the arid and semi-arid American West, because it will drive you to shrieking, tears and/or the bottle. Especially don’t read about water policy. Just don’t.
Um Yeah
Red state dumbshits, even when they lose they win.
Has anyone written a book about how the South was practically a third world country until the New Deal?
morzer
ThatLeftTurn, could you recommend some
goodbooks that I ought to avoid on the subject?ds
It’s not a problem of messaging. It’s a problem of national character.
People just don’t want to admit that they ever benefitted from a government program. That’s something that lazy layabouts and undeserving minorities do.
The angry white males and the women who love them are never going to admit that some know-it-all liberal was right. But they’ll happily take advantage of subsidized, guaranteed health insurance once it’s available.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@morzer #10:
To begin with, I would suggest staying away from Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert. The also, too links at Amazon have many other interesting books which should be avoided as well, so that’s a good place to not start.
Brick Oven Bill
This is because the southern United States is closer to Mexico than the northern United States DougJ.
Glenn Beck teaches the Teabagger that one of his Twelve Values is Thrift. Following our leader’s dictate, we find that the best food value is the Burger King quarter-pound-double-cheeseburger, with a value order of French fries.
The Teabagger enjoys his cheese most when it is melted. As such, he eats the French fries first, with the French fry bag resting atop his still-wrapped burger, to allow the latent heat of these French fries to add additional energy to his burger, and create a more melted cheese.
Then he savors and eats his burger.
Lastly, the Teabagger looks to the bottom of the bag, and with rare exception, finds one or two French fries that gravity has moved from the French fry bag to the base of the larger bag.
These French fries are like ThatLeftTurnInABQ. Cold and greasy, but always enjoyable.
TR
Of course not. The South and the West were the major beneficiaries of New Deal infrastructure spending — massive hydroelectric dams, rural electrification projects, giant reforestation programs, etc. etc. — and they promptly turned around and complained about the oppressive nature of a federal government that was giving them much more in federal spending than they paid in federal taxes.
morzer
There’s a good reason why the GOP is so desperate to keep the South poor and backward. Look what happens to white voters with more college education, and towns with liberal arts colleges. They become bastions of liberalism. If the GOP really cared about the South, they’d fight like crazy to get more federal funds for education and development, rather than the reverse. Basically, the GOP knows that if the South is poor, there’s a lot of useful resentment and anger. Of course, if the South ever realized what the GOP had done, we’d have to send in troops to save the Republicans from being torn limb from limb.
TR
Check out Bruce Schulman’s From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt and Anthony Badger’s New Deal/New South.
Comrade Kevin
Those must be some powerful narcotics BOB is taking.
morzer
ThatLeftTurn – thank you, I shall stroll over to Amazon and
investigatepointedly ignore the heretical tome. I might, of course, have to skim a few pages, just so I know what tunes the devil is playing. I am sure you understand.jnfr
@Yutsano
You can find taxes and spending per state on this Tax Foundation web page. Look for the PDF link, “Special Report No. 139”. This was for tax year 2004, but it has some historical information, too.
Here’s another Tax Foundation page with state by state information arranged into a chart. Simpler to read.d
licensed to kill time
I guess BOB thinks you get cooties from standing too close to Mexico or something.
And he made me hungry for a cheeseburger and fries.
AnotherBruce
Those must be some powerful narcotics BOB is taking.
Georgia is not really too close to Mexico. Yet another geography fail.
me
As a resident of the Great Lakes Basin, I say fuck’em. Or if not, they can move and start paying taxes here.
morzer
Bill’s internal compass must be a bit more than usually confused today. Still, that’s what eating
Glenn Beckdreck with fries does to you.ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@BOB #13:
Heh.
I’ve been called worse.
How’s the weather in AbstractNounWorld today? Is it Partly Cloudy with A Chance of Mixed Metaphors?
Yutsano
@ morzer:
Or he’s just hungry and trying to con us into buying him lunch. I’ve seen how grifters do these sort of tricks.
ds
Well, this isn’t true. When the South was poor and backward, it was Democratic. Even the rich people in the South weren’t rich enough to pay much income tax, so basically the New Deal and the government programs in the following decades were endless free money for the South.
That’s how you explain a bunch of Southern reactionaries supporting a liberal party. No one will ever turn down free money.
Once the South became rich enough that government programs meant a tradeoff between paying taxes and receiving benefits, the enthusiasm for liberal programs evaporated. This is true even though overall the South was still receiving far more in benefits than it was paying in taxes.
If you look at who the Republicans are in the “red states” it’s the upper income people. The more money you make, the more likely you are to vote Republican.
thomas Levenson
You know, I’m OK with subsidizing
the welfare cheatsfine upstanding Galtian masses in the South and West.It gives us a bigger market for the things MA makes (college educations, medical care, tech). And it gives me the naive and probably insane stupid hope that when people become prosperous enough, and have their faces rubbed in the fact that FSM worshiping hippies keep making their material existence better (and in some cases, possible — see health care and tech combined, above) that we’ll begin making inroads.
Seriously: economic insecurity lies behind a lot of populism, now and forever. We’re in the business of making cool stuff where I hang out. Perhaps if we do enough of it, we can deflate the angritude bubble that has followed the collapse of the tech and housing explosions.
Speaking of which, as I ramble, has anyone done a study/map of teabaggery by local foreclosure rates?
rootless-e
Y’all do not understand. If you ever confront a Republic grifter with the welfare he or she sucks down, the response will be “I deserve it, because I work hard/some-other-bogus-excuse”.
morzer
ds, why do you think the GOP is so desperate to get rid of government by any means possible? Why do you think they try and minimize federal spending whenever they can? Do you really think they haven’t made the calculation that a poor South is a usefully resentful South? You’ve said yourself that FDR got votes via federal funding for employment programs. Look at the demographics – where are the blue patches in the South? Cities and towns. Not the rural areas. Why is that, do you think?
Violet
@ds:
I disagree. This may be how things are at the moment, but it’s not how things have always been. Things have changed and they can change back.
During and after the Great Depression, many people extolled the virtues of FDR’s New Deal and could state how they benefited. When it came time to vote, they remembered who helped put food on the table. I’ve got family members who went to college on the GI Bill and still to this day talk about what a great thing it was – and these are Republican family members. They’re not ashamed to admit the government helped them – although they’ll say they “deserved it” because of their military service. But it’s still a government program and they benefited. They’ll admit it when asked.
Dems let the Republicans get away with the “Government is bad!” meme for years – decades at this point – and they need to change the thought process. All government isn’t bad, or else we wouldn’t have the military, roads, disaster relief, police, FDA, etc. When people are pushed on this issue they recognize this to be true. But Dems stink at harnessing the power of this message and turning it into something that is pithy, meaningful, and easy to remember.
There’s definitely a racial component to the whole attitude of “government help is for lazy people” but that can be addressed with the proper messaging. Like…”Health care for all means a stronger economy” – show how helping even those “lazy minorities” helps everyone.
morzer
If you think the South is a land of milk and honey now, think again. Look at where the highest rates of poverty, education failure, poor available healthcare are. You’ll find the South pretty consistently leading the way. The South has always been poorer and less industrialized – and Southern obstruction to Federal intervention, federal programs, federal improvements can be traced back to the 1830s. Why did they oppose it? Because it threatened to undo their social structure. In the 1830s, it was about keeping slavery an economic necessity, and not losing value. Now, it’s about keeping a Southern elite in power. That elite happens to be Republican now – but it’s really just a name switch for the same old Dixiecrats.
lotus
Check out Rockefeller in mid-December — YouTube — especially when he says, “Up to now, healthcare’s been every 15 or 20 years. From now on, it’s going to be every single year. I love that.”
‘At ‘ere ain’t someone fearing the answers to Linda’s questions.
Alan in SF
Somebody stop that socialist fiend before he tries to give my state more than our share of tax benefits!
ds
The parts of the South that are blue are the areas with the highest concentrations of blacks.
If you look among white Southerners, the higher the income, the higher the vote for Republicans.
There are some exceptions in areas with large numbers of transplants. North Carolina’s “Research Triangle” has lots of affluent, liberal whites, but that’s only because they’re people who moved there from the Northeast, and brought their political views with them. There are similar cases in Atlanta and a few other spots.
If you look at affluent Southerners who aren’t transplants, they’re insane, hardcore Republicans.
Poor white Southerners are more evenly split between Republicans and Democrats.
burnspbesq
@um yeah:
Has anyone written a book about how the South was practically a third world country until the New Deal?
Many. Start with “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.” Surprised you didn’t read it in high school or college.
burnspbesq
@ Morzer:
There’s also a PBS documentary based on “Cadillac Desert” that you should avoid at all costs.
And don’t ever watch “Chinatown” again. It’s loosely based on the seminal event in the history of Southern California , the “acquisition” by Los Angeles of rights to Owens Valley water.
Joseph Nobles
@Violet: It’s hard to develop an easier message than “Every Single Republican Voted Against This Bill.”
Still, I put the odds at 60:40 that Republicans will still get credit for it.
El Cid
On this:
Plenty. This is a good example.
Or you can read what they were concluding at the time: The Report On Economic Conditions In the South, 1938. Here’s the President himself, Franklin Roosevelt, in the introduction.
This is no dry, tedious economic report. It was a powerful document which aimed at convincing leaders and public intellectuals outside the South to give a damn.
Damn big gubmit soshullists with their damn interference with free market malaria.
Punchy
Why am I staring at two sets of identical buttons?
The South has, for as long as I’ve had relatives there, been a bastion of ignorance, racism, and Republicanism. Fuckdouchery ad neausem.
ds
In the 1830s the Southern elites were insanely rich from the slave-based agricultural export economy, and they were correctly afraid that Whiggish policies of raising tariffs to promote industrialization mainly in the North would hurt their bottom line.
In the 1930s, the rest of the country was industrialized and the South wasn’t. Southern elites were much poorer than elites in the rest of the country. So the reactionary Southern elites decided to side with a bunch of Northern lefties to get billions in free money. That was the New Deal coalition.
BC
I believe Scott Brown was elected, in part, because Massachusetts already had a decent health insurance program and didn’t see how they could benefit from national health insurance reform. So it might be that the northeast begins to rebel against being the cash register for the rest of the country in terms of social programs, particularly if they can’t see that other regions are doing their fair share.
Violet
@ Joseph Nobles:
That message is not good enough. The Republicans will just say that they voted against it because they were protecting the nation’s financial interest and “if only the Democrats had listened to us the health reform bill wouldn’t have cost so much.” Details be damned.
Dems need to go a bit more Grayson – “Republicans didn’t want your sick kid to have health coverage, but we made sure your kid could get the treatment he needed and you wouldn’t go bankrupt.” Or “Republicans care more about the CEO of the health insurance company than they do your sick child.” Those are the kind of messages people will remember.
Zulif tyrese
…Or graduated from one of the 47 thousand universities in the vicinity of RTP.
We southern liberals are not entirely helpless and dependent on being graced by the presence of glorious, superior northerners.
ds
I think the current equilibrium, where the Democrats fight like hell for programs that mostly benefit the South, and in the exchange the South sweeps Republicans into power, can’t hold.
The New Deal coalition worked because Democrats brought the money, and the South brought the votes. Today the Dems are bringing the money and the South is bringing teabags to drape around their ears.
Regional equity is becoming a big issue. It didn’t blow up HCR, because liberals desperately wanted it done, even though it meant screwing the states that already did the right thing and had relatively few uninsured citizens.
But in the future, because the South is no longer part of the Democratic electoral coalition, there’s going to be a lot of pressure to stop subsidizing the South.
It will be interesting to see how the “small government” Republicans will respond. “SOSHULISM. YOU’RE TRYING TO SPEND LESS MONEY ON US.”
Nancy Irving
So, as usual the blue states will pay the taxes and the red states will get the benefits. And the red states will STILL complain!
mclaren
Ah, another trip to the alternate universe, courtesy of the kooks and cranks and crackpots who infest this forum.
Absolutely. All those millions upon millions of new poor people who will be eligible for Medicaid…except for the inconvenient little fact that most people who need Medicaid are currently excluded by the states’ draconian means tests.
Let’s take a few examples: Wal-Mart currently advises all its employees to go on Medicaid because Wal-Mart refuses to provide health benefits for its employees. It’s the magic of the market at work! Private businesses run by greedy corrupt billionaires like the Walton family rake in billions, while the state governments foot the bill to compensate for the private bussiness’ irresponsibility — it’s the old story, private profits and socialized losses. Problem is, none of those Wal-Mart employees qualify for Medicaid because they have more than $2000 of possessions. Ask yourself — do you own a car? Whoops, you don’t qualify for Medicaid! Do you have furniture in your house and clothes in your closet and a computer and a cellphone? Whoops, you don’t qualify for Medicaid! Do you live in a house? Whoops, you don’t qualify for Medicaid!
Then we have dirt poor college students. These people own cellphones and laptops and enough other widgets that they blow right through the $2000 limit for Medicaid — many college students own a bike that costs $500 just by itself, or an $1800 moped, if not a car. So once again, college students are struck from the Medicaid rolls. If you get sick and you’re in college and you’re poor as a churchmouse and you have no health insurance, tough tit! $600,000 bill! No Medicaid for you!
And then we have people who run their own small businesses — very small businesses, say, the guy with a hot dog cart, or the guy who fixes peoples’ computers, or the guy who owns a coffee shop that’s barely breaking even. For these people, health insurance costs $18,000 a year and up because they’re a one-person business, but all of these people, every single one, owns more than $2000 in equipment in their coffee shop or their computer repair shop or their hot dog cart. So they’re fvcked, stuck and outa luck. No Medicaid for them!
So what we rapidly discover is that essentially none of the people who actually need Medicaid will actually be able to get it under the new HCR bill.
Meanwhile, states are already gong broke so fast they’re panicking, shutting down basic services, stopping trash pickup, ending bus routes, it’s a tsunami of red ink out there. The idea that all these bankrupt states giving IOUs to their contractors because they can’t afford to pay ’em will suddenly be able to cough up an additional 10% for 15 million new Medicaid recipients is hallucinogenic.
You people really have stumbled into our universe from an alternate reality. I’ve tuned into an episode of Fringe! Say hello to Peter for me in your alternate universe.
And now we return you to the regularly scheduled delusional gibberish spewed by Balloon Juice commenters who have mesmerized themselves into fantasizing that the HCR bill is actual “reform” instead of making the current dire situation even worse.
vhh
I want to second the comments of El Cid and ds. I live in Tennessee, but grew up in Massachusetts. I also understand Appalachian culture, since my parents came from W. Virginia.
The South owes its present well being to the generosity of FDR, the Rockefellers, and the Northern Democrats who did not let the region’s nasty history of racial violence and sedition keep them from giving Southerners a leg up to prosperity comparable to that of the nation as a whole.
The Tax Foundation study points up key contradiction: with a very few exceptions (eg Texas), the Red States have for a long time received 30 to 100% more in Federal funding than they have paid in taxes. Blue states such as New Jersey, California, and Massaschusetts receive far less in benefits than they pay in taxes. Note that Sarah Palin’s Alaska (which nets about $2 of fed funds for every dollar they pay in) has joined Mississipi as a top competitor for Red Neck Welfare Queen.
I really fear that the increasing dominance of the GOP by Southern reactionaries who employ originally left wing Jacobin/Leninist tactics—supporting insane, destructive policies that are deliberately intended to drive the country further into crisis, in the hopes of then seizing power—will ultimately force the majority Democrats to respond in kind by deliberately isolating the South from federal benefits.
The only way to avoid this recipe for national disaster is for the Dems to mount a serious fightback campaign in the public arena, calling out the lies and revisionism of the Teabaggers and the hypocrisy of the ruling GOPers. Wee need to see more Grayson explosions on TV, more pithy sarcasm from Wehner and Frank, more adroit skewering of the hypocrites by Obama, and lots more parody from Franken. And a lot more calling BS by real Appalachians like James Webb and John Cole.
Wile E. Quixote
Hey mclaren, do you have any sources for the endless tide of noisome shit that flows from your mouth? I mean seriously, you’re like the pissy, left-wing version of Erick Erickson. Well I guess that pissy is redundant in this case, but still…
Wile E. Quixote
@ds
I for one can’t wait for this. I live in Washington state. In Washington state you have the productive half of the state, which is west of the Cascades, and the useless, lazy, good for nothing half of the state, which is east of the Cascades. Guess which half votes Republican? Well that would be the half of the state that was a desolate wasteland until FDR formed the BPA and which would dry up and blow away if the federal government started charging market rates for the water that farmers in the eastern half of the state use. Guess which half of the state receives more in state spending than they do in state taxes? That would also be the eastern half of the state. All of the major private sector employers in Washington are in the western half of the state. Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon and PACCAR to name a few. Guess which half of the state is always bitching about the Seattle liberals who have better paying jobs, pay higher property taxes, higher gasoline taxes and higher sales taxes. Why that would be the eastern, conservative, Republican half of the state.
I’d love to start an initiative in Washington to just cut the state in half at the Cascades and let Eastern Washington go its own way. Just tell them “look, you’re always bitching about the liberals in Seattle and Olympia, well guess what, you won’t have to put up with them any more, or the tax dollars that they’ve been subsidizing you with.”
Of course if this passed it means that we’d end up with two more Republicans in the Senate, Republicans who would then grab every federal dollar they could while bitching about liberals, so perhaps those of us in Western Washington just need to figure out how we can keep Eastern Washington crushed under our boots while cutting the amount of tax dollars they receive from the state.
bob h
The repeal effort obviously aims to put a Hail Mary in the vicinity of Justice Kennedy.
mclaren
And another kook stumbles by gibbering drivel:
Were you on drugs or drunk off your ass, Wile E. Coyote, when I posted those 47 different links I’ve put up over the last few weeks?
Since posting links accomplishes nothing, you can google ’em yourself. Google “state cutting medicaid.”
You’ll get results like:
Medicaid’s continuing crunch in a recession (Feb 1, 2010)
States consider medicaid cuts as use grows (19 February 2010)
States cutting slots for medicaid funded in-home services (21 March 2010)
Education, medicaid focus of possible state cuts (25 March 2010)
Medicaid delaying reimbursement to health care providers
Washington state Walgreens cutting out medicaid (18 march 2010)
State [of new Mexico] considers cutting optional medicaid services (17 September 2009)
Hey there, Coyote — still think I have no sources for the “noisome shit” I spout? Or are you still trying to sound out the words in those newspaper articles phonetically?
While you’re working on that reading thing, make sure to check out these newspaper articles too –google “no cost controls health care reform.”
You’ll find results like:
James Love: Health care reform without cost control (21 March 2010)
Cost Control and Health Care Reform: The Case for All-Payer Regulation (22 May 2009)
Cost control essential to health care reform (23 August 2009)
Cost control: Time to get serious (New England Journal of Medicine, 29 July 2009)
Then you can try googling “recession state fiscal crisis” and you’ll discover results like:
Recession continues to batter state budgets
Dealing with the recession and state fiscal crises
California in crisis</B.
Additional fiscal relief needed to help states address recession’s impact
Update on state fiscal crisis: National governors association
Ravitch sets broad plan on New York fiscal crisis
Wow. Looks like everyone from the New York Times to the New England Journal of Medicine is spouting that “noisome shit that’s coming out of [my] mouth.”
So let’s see if I’ve got this straight — stating the documented fact that we’ve got unprecedented fiscal crises in every state in the union is “noisome shit.” And pointing out the documented fact that states are slashing their medicaid benefits is also “noisome shit.” And citing the documented fact that doctor after doctor and economist after economist and PhD after PhD has hammered on the table and warned us that without cost controls health care reform is a bad joke, well, that’s also “noisome shit.”
In short, just about everyone everywhere seems to be spouting “noisome shit,” according to you, Wile. E. Coyote.
Boy oh boy oh boy. Reality sure does have a bias toward “noisome shit,” doesn’t it?