Color me completely unshocked from this report in the LA Times:
When the Affordable Care Act took effect in October 2013, there were 14 states in which more than 1 in 5 adults lacked health insurance; today only Texas remains, according to data released Monday….
Its uninsurance rate fell from 27% in 2013 to just under 21% in the first half of this year, making it the only state that has more than one-fifth of its residents uninsured.
By contrast, in Arkansas and Kentucky, both of which started above 20% uninsured, just 9% of adult residents lack insurance….
In addition to Texas, most of the states with the highest levels of adults lacking insurance are located in the South and interior West in states including Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Nevada.
So states that did not expand Medicaid and are engaged in massive resistance to assisting people getting subsidized private insurance are sucking goat balls.
They are sociopathic sadists without safewords.
Jerzy Russian
Would “green balloons” work here?
Davis X. Machina
Standing in the clinic door….
Untreated chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder now!
Untreated chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder tomorrow!
Untreated chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder forever!
Cervantes
You’d think someone — if not the Democrats then someone else — could find a way to explain the above to the people of Texas.
Punchy
Hmmm…what could all these states have in common w/r/t to their voting trends? I find it amusing that Idaho shows up on all these “shittiest (fill in the blank)” lists. Basically, Idaho is the Mississippi of South Canada.
LWA
@Cervantes:
Oh, they understand.
But what you need to understand is that if health insurance were to be given away freely it would mean giving it to Those People. And that wouldn’t be right now would it?
Sherparick
But for them every zygote is sacred. Remember folks when Glenn Greenwald tells you there is no difference between Barack Obama and George Bush or between Hillary Clinton and any of the Republican candidates, the country they want to create will make every miscarriage a Federal homicide investigation. http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2015/08/akin-rubio-mashup.html
WereBear
I’ve run across the controversy about the Little House books; so much of them were written by the daughter, it appears. I don’t know why this is a controversy when Maxwell Parish received Look Homeward, Angel in a piano case and culled an actual book out of reams of inchoate thoughts by Thomas Wolfe.
But I don’t make the rules.
It seems the beloved prairie muffin was a bit Galty herself, claiming:
Even though they had received thousands of dollars in support payments from their successful daughter. Perhaps that doesn’t count. As a historian pieced it together:
Offered as a clue to their mindset. Perhaps, despite all reality to the contrary, they must feel they are utterly independent for them to have a scrap of self-esteem. I’m mostly Jungian, but here I’m with Freud… only a life of constant adversity, suffering, and torment, where they are constantly told “You are on your own” can result in people who cling to that spurious independence even when it hurts?
ThresherK
“Florida man” has competition? Wow.
As someone ensconced in a blue state, I estimate that there are not enough political resources for the non-crazee to fix Texas at this moment. We are too busy fighting for the House, Senate and future of the courts. (Of course, also the White House, but that goes without saying.)
(PS That doesn’t mean I don’t feel for the folks in other, smaller, reliably red states who aren’t getting the governance they’re being taxed for. It’s just that Texas has so many people in it that it seems like a bigger screw-over than any other four or five states put together. If governance is the best meting out of scarce public resources and political will to do the most good for the most folks, the millions on millions of Texans are in a hard place.)
Betty Cracker
The private insurer aspect cannot be emphasized often enough. The sociopaths are lying when they claim to be a bulwark against socialized medicine, and they’re lying hypocrites when they frame Medicare Advantage cuts as a “$700 billion cut to Medicare” (an actual socialized medical plan) to scare senor citizens.
And thanks in part to mealy-mouthed, both-sides-do-it “fact checks” like this, they continue to get away with being lying, hypocritical sociopaths.
p.a.
@Cervantes:@Cervantes: Demographics of voting, even BEFORE voter suppression.
If I were king: 1)general election a paid national holiday
2) mandatory voting, with a modest fine ($50?) for not. (I don’t give a fuck that this will most hurt the least able to pay. They need to vote!)
ThresherK
@p.a.: Maybe a $25 reward for voting and a $25 fine for not?
Betty
Somewhat OT but this really lays out why those of us called lefties are hesitant to support HRC:
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2015/08/11/3690105/nurses-for-bernie/
Her refusal to commit on important issues is very troublesome.
gene108
@Cervantes:
Americans, by and large, do not seem to care much about collective social progress these days.
Everything is reduced down to how it affects them right here and now.
21% of people in Texas not having health insurance means 79% of the people do have health insurance, so the main thing they think about the healthcare system is (1) how much insurance costs them, which includes costs of Rx, visits, etc. and (2) can they keep their doctor(s).
Even liberals have a tough time groking the idea of how social and economic systems can effect them or possibly help them in the long run or in the event of unforeseen accidents, beyond the fact their bills just went up (thanks Obama!).
It is a really hard sell to get enough people to see how expanding and improving the social safety net benefits everyone in the long run. We generally tend to be so narrowly focused on our immediate issues.
Oatler.
About time R M used “sociopathic sadists” in a column! In Texas, of course.
Belafon
@Cervantes: This is Texas. We’d rather pay an extra $1000/year for our health insurance than have “those people” get medical coverage.
Belafon
@gene108:
Even if it is actually costing them right now.
Belafon
@Betty Cracker: Some people only see money. If my company were to install a gas station on site that would supply free gas to every employee, but would reduce everyones paycheck by $5 to cover it, a lot people would throw a fit.
Davis X. Machina
@gene108:
As I have said on several past occasions, it’s difficult to sell social provision generally in a country where one major party, and possibly a majority of the political nation, doesn’t believe the noun ‘society’ refers to any actually-existing thing.
NCSteve
Amen. But I honestly had to double-take on the byline, because I got to those last few sentences and thought it had to be one of Cole’s.
japa21
@NCSteve: Yes. Truly strong words from the normally rather restrained Richard.
Amir Khalid
Au contraire: They are fighting the good fight against Obamacare. At least, that’s how I think they see it.
Cervantes
@Betty:
Those “nurses” … imagine their callousness.
Someone ought to take their microphones away and hold them accountable.
Patrick
As I was told umpteen times by these very “wise” teabaggers, subsidized private insurance = tyranny.
Do these folks even realize that if they lose their job, they may not EVER get health insurance if they have a pre-existing condition? Then again, a fair number of them are old enough to be dependent on Medicare, which apparently is not tyranny.
Sometimes I wonder which planet these people live on…
Richard Mayhew
@japa21: Most of the time I try to be an explainer and a wonk, and my moral compass is definately informed by my wonkiness (and vice versa, it is an interesting feedback loop) but things needs to be called what they are.
Davis X. Machina
@Patrick: No revolution without martyrs![1]
[1] Preferably not me.
Chris
The poor people in states that did not expand Medicaid, a disproportionate amount of which are not white, are in the shit, which is exactly what the legislators and the majority of voters intended when they passed this. The refusal to expand Medicaid is accomplishing exactly what the people of who made it happen intended it to accomplish.
Belafon
@Chris:
Starting with John Roberts.
WereBear
Why Planet Limbaugh, of course. Where no one is ever accountable for anything they do, lying is expected and laughed away, and they all want to live on Big Rock Oxy Mountain.
japa21
@Richard Mayhew: Totally recognize that. As you know, we work in the same industry and can get mired in the wonkiness involved. But there are times that the reality of the sociopathic opposition must be called out. I applaud you for it.
Kropadope
@WereBear:
Now, I’m sure plenty of them are legitimately against drug abuse and that the desire to live on Big Rock Oxy Mountain has a bipartisan basis, albeit probably pretty weak.
Chris
@gene108:
I’ve had a conversation (well, not really in depth, but you know) with a co-worker recently who just moved here to Florida from New York, and was noting that even though he was making less money down here, there were so many more taxes in New York that he was actually left with more at the end of the day. … At the same time, he was talking about Medicaid and housing assistance and other such benefits up there that were making me drool with envy. Who cares if New York is leaving you with a little less money, when you know all the money you make here is going to be eaten up in hospital bills, unsubsidized health insurance, and all the other things you have to pay for yourself because you had less in taxes? Yes, it might take you a little more time to make it big up there, but at least you won’t crash and burn along the way.
It’s like saying “this car is cheaper, so I don’t care that it has no airbags, no seatbelts, and brakes that only work half the time.”
p.a.
@ThresherK: ok. but the optics are ready made for rethugs: buying votes.
Chris
@Belafon:
He really belongs in the deepest hole in hell for that vote.
WereBear
@Kropadope: I should have expanded my point, which is Big Rock Oxy Mountain can be symbolically seen as their passionate desire to beat Reality into submission whenever possible.
Even as a child, I was astonished at people who craved a comforting lie so much more than a harsh truth. Because I could see that the comforting lie was doing them so much harm, and creating so much mayhem in their lives. Yet they clung to it like a drowner with a life ring.
I still don’t know why. I think it’s an incapacity to understand lots of things… or perhaps only a stark lack of imagination that doesn’t let them project possible events.
Like those people who don’t understand that once they buy the house, that chair they hate so much will be in a van leaving the state, ya know? The ones that make everyone paint everything beige to sell it.
JPL
Obamacare is too new to compare infant mortality in Texas with other states, or at least I can’t find a chart highlighting 2014 only. It would be an interesting comparison though. The pro life folks seem to care about the fetus, as long as it doesn’t involve tax payer dollars.
Tripod
@Davis X. Machina:
They’re holding out for single payer.
WereBear
During the eighties housing boom, there were so many Florida real estate publications in the New York break rooms of the area. They would see that $100k would get them three bedrooms, a Florida room, a patio, a brand new kitchen, that their brains would fall out into their laps. And some of them moved.
And found out that lovely new home was 20 miles out in the swampland, that they couldn’t go outside without being eaten alive by mosquitoes, that even if the children wanted to go outside there were alligators,. They wished they paid heating bills only half the year, instead of AC bills year round. And the reason the houses were so cheap was that, at best, they were making half of what they used to make.
Ah, yes. I remember.
Kropadope
@WereBear:
OK, that works.
Steeplejack (phone)
@WereBear:
Maxwell Perkins.
d-boy
Texas exceptionalism
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Chris:
That was one argument I actually won with my now-late Republican/libertarian father — he was simultaneously bragging about his low taxes in AZ and complaining about the lack of public services, and I pointed out that my higher taxes in CA paid for public services. He had to admit that he could see that it was a trade-off, not a clear-cut win for either side. Woot.
Stella B
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Your father is also probably paying more for his auto insurance and Medicare supplement in business-friendly Arizona than he would in consumer-friendly California. His house is cheaper, but I bet his property tax is higher, too.
I just read another “worst states to retire in” listicle. They always look at the top earned income rate as a big part of the metric for determining “worst”, because retired people always have gigantic earned incomes. Not.
Brachiator
Why isn’t this discussed in this way in any of the debates?
Yeah, I know, rhetorical question.
Do we know what impact this has had on health outcomes in these states?
RaflW
Also, KUT radio is reporting that the Perry campaign has stopped paying all staffers due to campaign funds ‘drying up.’ Sorry (not sorry), R2R!
pluege
They are sociopathic sadists without safewords.
people are, and will die and live degraded lives. The republicans causing this are criminals – period.
jonas
People in these states don’t need none of that liberal health care. That’s what prayer chains are for, amirite?
JustRuss
I have a friend who’s a Rockefeller-Republican type who recently shocked me by saying he believes our insane health care “system” is one of our country’s greatest barriers to entrepreneurship. I’ve always felt that to be self-evident, but apparently it takes 7 years of doing business in Sweden for common sense to trump ideology. Sadly, I don’t think we can make that scale sufficiently to educate the 27%.
Brachiator
@LWA:
The non-elderly uninsured breaks down this way for Texas:
White, 14%
Black, 22%
Hispanic, 31%
Other, 19%
This was in 2013, from Kaiser Foundation information. There’s a fair amount of ALL People in Texas going without health insurance.
Earl
According to wiki, the turnout in the 2014 gubernatorial election for Abbott vs Davis was 33.7% with Abbott winning 59.3% (2.79m) to 38.9% (1.84m). I’m as frustrated as I (assume) you all are, but I think at some point we should conclude health care isn’t that important to Texans. Otherwise, they need to *fucking vote*. Blah blah blah I know authorities aren’t eager to have the wrong people voting, but if you can’t spend a couple hours of effort every other year to vote in congressional, gubernatorial, and presidential elections, then piss off. Even felons can vote once sentence plus probation is fully discharged.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_gubernatorial_election,_2014
TriassicSands
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
That’s a rare victory. Enjoy it, as it will probably be one of the few of this sort you’re ever lucky enough to win.
@JustRuss:
Even sadder, those 27% (if you’re referring to the infamous 27%) are virtually uneducable. The only thing that might get through to some of them would be to have a life-altering (ending?) health care catastrophe happen to either them or their immediate family. That might get through to some of them. Ideally, for education purposes, they would lose health care because they could no longer afford to pay for it, and then, immediately thereafter, the disaster would strike leaving them devastated and bankrupt. It’s hardly something you’d want to wish on anyone (other than, say, Dick Cheney), but direct experience, not evidence and facts often does the job.
(As is often the case in the US, the job creation about which Texas governors brag incessantly has more to do with a boom they played no role in creating, than in some magical job creating policies. Yes, we’ve been on a fossil fuel production binge for some time now, so you’d expect states with lots of oil, natural gas, or shale oil to have low unemployment and/or lots of jobs. And that’s exactly the kind of employment that eventually runs out — along with the resource or the demand for the resource. Jeb Bush brags constantly about his economic miracle, which rode the back of a housing bubble he didn’t create, and which, lucky for him, didn’t burst until after he left office. It’s a pretty common story in this country. In the case of Texas, those jobs have been bought at the cost of more and more carbon to pour into the atmosphere to further aggravate that minor problem called climate change.)
Mike G
Texas Republicans are very concerned about this statistic. They feel it’s not high enough.
“It’s not a problem unless it’s MY problem” remains the pig-headed mentality. Health catastrophe isn’t likely to strike enough of them for a mass change of mind, and we can’t count on them starting to feel empathy for anyone outside their little tribe.
And if they are bankrupted by medical expenses they’ll just blame Obama, because Jesus and Freedom.