Whose healthier… red state kids or blue state kids?
read time: 790 words, about three minutes
Michael Petit, author of a new book “Homeland Insecurity … American Children at Risk,” lays out an interesting set of data comparing kid’s health in each state to how the state voted in the 2004 election.
To determine the kid part, he used 11 statistics measuring health, including insurance coverage and prenatal care.
The top ten: Wisconsin, New Jersey, Washington, Minnesota, Nebraska, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Iowa, and New Hampshire. Only Iowa voted Republican.
The bottom ten: Wyoming, Georgia, Arkansas, Alabama, South Carolina, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Louisiana and Mississippi. All Republican.
In fact 24 of the bottom 25 are red states.
That’s ummm, significant.
Timothy Jost, professor of health care law at the Washington and Lee University School of Law says:
“States that tend to be politically and economically conservative have less inclusive medical assistance programs. So, it would make a great deal of sense that states that are Republican have conservative social and economic policies that lead to a decreased health status for poor children.”
How does this jive with that No Child Left Behind platform? But I digress.
Of those blue states Jost says:
“More liberal states probably have better food stamp, public assistance, housing and education programs.”
Back in early December, 2006 I wrote about an annual report on America’s Health Rankings.
The top 5 states for health were: Minnesota, Vermont, New Hampshire, Hawaii and Connecticut… all blue states, four of them in the top 10 for kid’s health.
Jost believes the solution is to get people insured:
“That is not going to happen through the private sector; the government is going to have to step in. It is a political problem, and it needs to be solved politically.”
Perhaps that is A solution. Is it the BEST solution?
I dunno.
Health care costs big bucks. I just made my quarterly payment and by golly, it’s gone up again. And I don’t have fancy insurance.
And my experience has been it’s not necessarily easy to get decent health care, EVEN IF you have insurance.
The Universal Health Care platform is popping up quite a bit these days.
In California… where I live and pay taxes… they’re talking about it. 6.2 million folks are uninsured in California. We’re talking about a lot of oranges and artichokes there.
But beyond that, is “having health insurance” the magic pill (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun). Yes, I realize there’s utility in insurance. But for the most part, health insurance is sick insurance and health care is sick care.
Do you go to a doctor when you’re well?
In the U.S. we spend significantly more on health care and yet, we’re not the healthiest… by far.
Let’s throw another piece of data into the conversation…
For every $1 spent on “wellness”, $3 is saved on “health” care.
World changer people were hanging out in Davos Switzerland this week at the World Economic Forum.
Back in 2000 Bill & Melinda Gates and a few others formed GAVI - the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization. GAVI has immunized 138 million kids for preventable diseases. Darn big numbers.
The estimate is the program has prevented 2.3 million deaths and heck of a lot of illness. They’ve spent $1.5 billion. That’s under $11 a kid and about $650 a life saved.
One of the changes they’re going to make is in the personnel sticking all those needles in all those kids. They’ve invested in training and funding doctors to do the work. Seems those doctors move onto other opportunities. They will now instead train paramedics. Lowers the costs of training and the thought is turnover will also be lowered.
It’s true, a paramedic is not able to do as much medically as a doctor, but they can dispense vaccinations. GAVI doesn’t have a timid goal. They’d like to vaccinate everyone who needs to be. If they cut their costs, they can vaccinate more people.
How much does it costs to have PE in schools? Are we saving a dollar only to incur a $3 expense elsewhere?
I bet a year of PE costs less than a round of chemotherapy.
Instead of focusing on “Universal Health Care” in the form of health insurance, why don’t we spend our resources on Universal Well Care with education on nutrition, exercise, lifestyle and stress relief and management and other programs.
Sooooo many “health” care dollars are now being spent on preventable lifestyle diseases. Just because you have insurance should you do your best to use it?
Would you burn down your house because you have homeowners insurance?
It costs less to prevent than to treat. You get what you focus on.
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