America’s Poorest States 2012

[thoughtone]

Guess how they voted.


source: 24/7 Wall Street


10. Oklahoma
> Median household income: $43,225
> Population: 3,791,508 (23rd lowest)
> Unemployment rate: 6.2% (8th lowest)
> Pct. below poverty line: 17.2% (16th highest)

Oklahoma remarkably low unemployment rate of 6.2% for a state that is among the nation’s poorest. The poverty rate of 17.2% has inched up each year from the 2008 rate of 15.9%. The low median income suggests a need for higher paying jobs as Oklahoma relies heavily on agricultural production. Also, government and military, which tend to be low-paying jobs, account for the highest percentage of jobs in the state. But Oklahoma is also a major producer of oil and gas. Growth in the energy sector, which tends to pay more, would help improve on Oklahoma’s median income of $43,225.

9. South Carolina
> Median household income: $42,367
> Population: 4,679,230 (24th highest)
> Unemployment rate: 10.3% (8th highest)
> Pct. below poverty line: 18.9% (9th highest)

South Carolina has been hit harder than many states by the recent economic downturn. The state’s sizable tourism industry has slowed as families cut back on vacations. The state’s 10.3% unemploymentrate in 2011 was well above the 8.9% national rate. South Carolina’s poverty rate of 18.9% was the ninth highest in the U.S. and significantly higher than the national rate of 15.9%.Moreover, approximately6.5% of families made less than $10,000 a year, the fifth highest proportion in the country. Meanwhile, only 2.9% of families made more than $200,000 a year, the sixth-lowest rate in the country.

8. New Mexico
> Median household income: $41,963
> Population: 2,082,224 (15th lowest)
> Unemployment rate: 7.4% (18th lowest)
> Pct. below poverty line: 21.5% (2nd highest)

Last year, 7.2% of families in New Mexico earned less than $10,000, a larger proportion than in any state but Mississippi and Louisiana. In addition, 21.5% of residents lived below the poverty line, well above the national rate of 15.9%. As a result of poverty and limited job benefits, many New Mexicans cannot afford health insurance. Last year, 19.8% of the state’s residents were uninsured. This was significantly higher than the national rate of 15.1% even though the cost of healthcare in New Mexico was slightly below the national average.

7. Louisiana
> Median household income: $41,734
> Population: 4,574,836 (25th highest)
> Unemployment rate: 7.3% (16th lowest)
> Pct. below poverty line: 20.4% (3rd highest)

Louisiana is located at the center of the poorest region in the country — the Deep South along the gulf coast. When Hurricane Katrina struck the region in 2005, the southern part of the state was decimated, particularly the city of New Orleans. Six years later, the city was still recovering with almost 17% of families earning less than $10,000 per year, more than triple the national rate of 5.1%. By many measures, conditions are actually getting worse in the state. As of 2011, for the first time since Katrina, more than one in five residents lived below the poverty line, only slightly better than Mississippi and New Mexico. Louisiana’s median income fell by more than the country as a whole, falling more than $2,000 between 2010 and 2011.

6. Tennessee
> Median household income: $41,693
> Population: 6,403,353 (17th highest)
> Unemployment rate: 9.2% (16th highest)
> Pct. below poverty line: 18.3% (12th highest)

In Tennessee some 6.1% of families, or about a third of families in poverty, made less than $10,000 in 2012, a percentage point higher than the national figure. Poverty in many of Tennessee’s largest cities is even worse than the state as a whole. In Memphis, the state’s largest city, 27.2% of the population lived below the poverty line, including 13.1% of households earning less than $10,000 a year. In Chattanooga, 28.7% of the population lived below the poverty line, including 16.3% of households earning less than $10,000 annually. While the state’s median income was lower than most, Tennessee had the second-lowest overall cost of living in and the lowest cost of living for housing among all states in 2011.

5. Alabama
> Median household income: $41,415
> Population: 4,802,740 (23rd highest)
> Unemployment rate: 9% (18th highest)
> Pct. below poverty line: 19% (7th highest)

In 2011, Alabama’s median income was more than $9,000 below the nation’s median income, while 6.4% of families lived off less than $10,000 a year — higher than in all but five states. For the second year in a row, Alabama’s poverty rate was 19%, remaining more than three percentage points above the national rate. Despite struggling with poverty, only 14.3% of Alabamians did not have health insurance last year — slightly better than the national figure of 15.1%. It is likely that Alabama’s cheap health care–the least expensive in the country for the fourth quarter of 2011–resulted in more insured residents.According to Gallup, since August of 2011 almost 23% of state residents reported not having enough money to buy food at least once.

4. Kentucky
> Median household income: $41,141
> Population: 4,369,356 (25th lowest)
> Unemployment rate: 9.5% (13th highest)
> Pct. below poverty line: 19.1% (5th highest)

Kentucky’s unemployment rate of 9.5%, while not as high as states such as South Carolina and Mississippi, was well above the national rate of 8.9%. The employment rate will likely stay high in the near future as mining, a major industry in Kentucky, has declined in the past year due to a drop in natural gas prices. Severe poverty plagues the state, as 6.9% of families earned less than $10,000 in 2011, the fourth lowest of all states. Meanwhile, a mere 3% of Kentucky families earned more than $200,000 a year, the seventh-lowest rate in the country. Fortunately for those with lower incomes, Kentucky has the fourth-lowest cost of living in the U.S., including the second-lowest cost of living for groceries.

3. Arkansas
> Median household income: $38,758
> Population: 2,937,979 (19th lowest)
> Unemployment rate: 8% (tied-25th lowest)
> Pct. below poverty line: 19.5% (4th highest)

While the national median household income fell to $50,502 in 2011, Arkansas was just one of three states where median income remained below $40,000 for the year. Despite an unemployment rate of 8% in 2011, nearly one percentage point below the national rate, the 19.5% of families lived below the poverty line, one of the nation’s highest rates. Poverty was slightly less of a problem in Little Rock, the state’s largest city, which had a 16.4% poverty rate and a median income of $40,976. Despite having the third-lowest cost of health care nationwide at the end of 2011, 17.1% of residents lived without health insurance last year–well above the national figure of 15.1%.

2. West Virginia
> Median household income: $38,482
> Population: 1,855,364 (14th lowest)
> Unemployment rate: 8% (tied-25th lowest)
> Pct. below poverty line: 18.6% (10th highest)

West Virginia’s median income of $38,482 was well off the median income of $40,093 in 2007. The state’s unemployment rate of 8% was well below the 8.9% nationwide. But, like Kentucky, a softening mining sector in 2012 could weaken West Virginia’s economy. The proportion of West Virginia residents without health insurance grew 4.9%, the third-largest increase in the U.S. Fortunately for cash-strapped residents, although the state’s overall cost of living is in the middle of the pack compared to all other states, the cost of groceries is the third lowest in the country.

1. Mississippi
> Median household income: $36,919
> Population: 2,978,512 (20th lowest)
> Unemployment rate: 10.7% (4th highest)
> Pct. below poverty line: 22.6% (the highest)

The median income of the poorest state in the country, Mississippi, was just slightly less than 53% of the median income of Maryland, the richest state. Mississippi’s median income–like many states– fell each year between 2008 and 2011, dropping $2,677 during that time. Not only did Mississippi have the highest poverty rate in the country, but 7.8% of Mississippi families made less than $10,000 in 2011, which was also the lowest rate in the country. While unemployment declined in most states between 2010 and 2011, Mississippi’s actually rose 0.2 percentage points, one of only two states to see an increase in unemployment.

 

[thoughtone]

 

[muckraker10021]

<img src="http://www.bartcop.com/educated-states.jpg" width="950">

 

[Lamarr]

California Leads in Poverty

The Golden State has reached a poverty rate that is now twice as bad as West Virginia’s and substantially worse than the rates of poverty in Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Texas, according to a new measure of poverty developed by the federal Census Bureau.

Democrat-run California earned its last-place rank under the federal government’s new measure of poverty, which incorporates more detailed analyses of welfare payments and the local costs of food, gasoline and housing. (View the new census data report)

The state’s costs are boosted by its environmental and workplace regulations, and by 38 million residents’ competition for housing close to the sea.

The new measure, however, also incorporates a controversial calculation of relative equality that demotes states, including California, that have wide gaps between wealthy people and people with less than one-third of state residents’ average income.

California snatched the last-place prize from Mississippi, which had the highest poverty rate under the older and simpler measure, which gauged people’s ability to buy basic services and goods.

Democratic California Gov. Gerry Brown’s office did not release a comment Nov. 15 about the new ranking, but did note that he would be attending a housing conference, the “Greenbuild International Conference and Expo,” in San Francisco Nov. 16.

The new measure, dubbed the “Supplemental Poverty Measure,” revised the California’s poverty rate from 16.3 percent up to 23.5 percent.

The report estimates that roughly 8.8 million people in California were poor during between 2009 and 2011, when Democrats controlled the state legislature and governorship, as well as the White House.

The stunning reversal in fortunes for the Democrat-dominated state — once a worldwide symbol of glitz and wealth — is underlined by previous census reports, which showed that only 11.1 percent of the state’s population was poor in 1969.

Only 13.7 percent of Americans were poor in 1969, and many of them were found in the agricultural states of the Old South. A third of Americans in Mississippi, and a quarter of Americans in Arkansas, Louisiana, South Carolina and Western Virginia, were poor.

Forty years later, after waves of federal and state regulations on housing, banking, health care and air quality, and amid increased financial aid for unmarried parents, youth, immigrants and unskilled people, the national poverty rate has climbed to 15.8 percent, according to the new Census Bureau measure.

The new measure supplants a poverty gauge developed in the 1960s. It incorporates the economic impact of welfare programs, transportation and child-care costs, changes in child-rearing practices — especially the impact of single parents raising kids — plus differences in the region’s average prices and health care costs.

Read More

 

[thoughtone]

California Leads in Poverty

LOL! at least you've secretly reading my posts. this thread is a year old and you were nowhere near it until now. When are you going to post in the poorest states and comment on muckraker10021's posts?

source: Huffington Post

California Poverty Rate Highest In Nation Based On New Census Department Figures


California has a poverty rate of 23.5 percent, the highest of any state in the country, according to figures released this week by the United States Census Bureau.

The only other geographic region with an equivalent poverty rate is the District of Columbia, with 23.2 percent. The second most poverty-stricken state was Florida, at 19.5 percent.

The recognition of California's shockingly high poverty rate comes as a part of a shift in the way the Census Bureau measures its data. When the government began examining poverty back in the early 1960s, the line for determining who fell underneath the threshold was determined solely by looking at food costs.

In the decades since, there's been increasing criticism this benchmark, as it doesn't take into account tax rates and assistance programs such as food stamps, child care expenses and medical costs. In examining its most recent data, the Census Bureau considered these previously ignored factors, deemed the "supplemental poverty measure."

These new metrics have yielded quite different results than in past years. Under the traditional definition of poverty, for example, California's rate is 16.3 percent.

"We're seeing a very slow recovery [nationally], with increases in poverty among workers due to more new jobs which are low-wage," University of Wisconsin-Madison economist Timothy Smeeding told the Associated Press. "As a whole, the safety net is holding many people up, while California is struggling more because it's relatively harder there to qualify for food stamps and other benefits."

The Golden State's jump between the supplemental and conventional measures was the largest swing of any state, and the Sacramento Bee attributes it to California's high cost of living.

"There are several important differences between the official and supplemental poverty measures," explained Census Bureau economist Kathleen Short in a statement. "For instance, the supplemental measure uses new poverty thresholds that represent a dollar amount spent on a basic set of goods adjusted to reflect geographic differences in housing costs. The official poverty thresholds are the same no matter where you live."

Under the supplemental measures, the national poverty rate jumped by a full point up to 16.1 percent, or just under 50 million individuals. The poverty rate for minors dropped from 22.3 percent down to 18.1 percent, while the rate for seniors (ages 65 and above) nearly doubled to 15.1 percent

 

[UltimateLurker]

No surprise there

 

[Fuckallyall]

<img src="http://www.bartcop.com/educated-states.jpg" width="950">

I could not find the metrics used for the second graphic. Could you find it.

 

[muckraker10021]

I could not find the metrics used for the second graphic. Could you find it.

PolitiFact checks 'Red State Socialism' graphic


The veracity of the data above, within the “reality-based” peer reviewed world of economists from all backgrounds (corporate, government, academics) is not in dispute on any level. And of course those non-partisan U.S. government employed career statisticians (those damn bureaucrats) —the same bean counters that issue the employment and budget numbers which determine how much federal money states receive —they also concur that the statistics in the picture chart above are correct.
The only people who were dumbfounded by the long standing fact that so called red states receive more federal largesse than the blue states were the perpetually willfully ignorant RepubliKlans; particularly the tea-baggers. The only nitpicking one could have with the data, which the RepubliKlans did decry, was the fact that the statistics reflected the year 2005. However this quibbling about the date of the data once again reveals the tea-baggers non-intuitive counter factual dogmatic idiocy.
If the 2005 numbers, recorded before this great recession that the nation is slowly climbing out of —show that the poorest states in the U.S., primarily red states, are receiving more of that ‘damned’ government money than the blue states— what would the numbers show for 2008 & 2009 & 2010 during the nadir of the recession??
It would obviously show an even more exacerbated flow of money to the more impoverished red states given those states dramatically thinner social safety nets versus a state like New York or Connecticut.
The Tax Foundation a business-backed foundation who produced the chart that contains the 2005 data has promised more current data from their site soon. But one does not have to wait for them, the Federal Reserve already has the numbers for 2007 & 2008 & 2009 and not surprisingly the megatrend of red states receiving more federal dollars than blue states did not change; why would it?

READ-
RepubliKlan Counties Have Most Food Stamp Growth

Mississippi Finally Abolishes Slavery in 2013, Ratifies 13th Amendment



<hr noshade color=#"0000FF" size="8"></hr>

 

[Fuckallyall]

THanks.

 

[thoughtone]

source: KHOU

Poorest of the poor left out of Affordable Care Act's health insurance expansion


CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Charlese Frazier lost her income and her health insurance in 2011 when she got laid off as a mortgage retention specialist by a Charlotte bank.
After looking briefly for another job, she decided to stay home and care for her 84-year-old father, who has dementia, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and prostate cancer.

She doesn’t get unemployment benefits because she’s not looking for work, and she can’t afford to buy her own health insurance.

Last month at a forum about the Affordable Care Act, Frazier, who is divorced and has a 22-year-old daughter, learned she would have been eligible for Medicaid in January if North Carolina had expanded that government program for the poor and disabled.

But North Carolina, like 25 other states, rejected that option. And Frazier became one of the half-million N.C. residents – some of the poorest of the poor – left without insurance despite the national health-system overhaul that was intended to drastically reduce the number of uninsured Americans.

Frazier, 58, earned more than $30,000 a year in her bank job, but because she has no income now, she got hit with a double-whammy. Not only doesn’t she qualify for Medicaid, she also isn’t eligible for government subsidies to buy insurance through the new online marketplace.

“All of this is new to me,” she said. “I’ve worked hard all my life and never had to depend on any type of assistance at all. … I’m taking care of my father 24/7. I just don’t know where to go.”

The Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare, requires almost all Americans to buy health insurance or pay a fine.

It was designed to provide insurance for people who don’t have access to coverage through their employers. It created an online exchange where low- and middle-income earners can buy private insurance with government subsidies.

The law called for the poorest of the uninsured to be covered by expanding Medicaid. Instead of letting the states pick up the tab, the federal government promised to cover all of the cost of the expansion for the first three years and no less than 90 percent in later years.

But last year, when the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the law, it also decreed that states couldn’t be mandated to expand Medicaid.

Every state in the Deep South, except for Arkansas, rejected the Medicaid expansion. Like North Carolina and South Carolina, most of those states are led by Republican governors who are philosophically opposed to the Affordable Care Act.

Because so many states rejected the expansion, two-thirds of poor blacks and single mothers and more than half of low-wage workers who are currently uninsured in the United States are left without insurance, according to an analysis by the New York Times. The government has said people who would have been covered by Medicaid in states that aren’t accepting the expansion will not face fines.

Adam Linker, a policy analyst at the North Carolina Health Access Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates for the poor, has been traveling the state talking about the new law and meeting many of those people who will fall through the cracks.

“They’re always very shocked that they won’t qualify for anything,” Linker said.

Expansion rejected

Republican legislators in North Carolina and the new Republican governor, Pat McCrory, agreed to reject the Medicaid expansion earlier this year, citing concern about the cost of offering Medicaid to a half-million more people.

Medicaid makes up 15 percent of the state’s $20 billion budget. The $3 billion cost to the state in the 2012 fiscal year compares to $2 billion a decade ago. The federal government pays about two-thirds of the cost for current participants, or about $11 billion.

McCrory also expressed concern about whether the federal government would pay its share of the cost to expand in light of the U.S. budget deficit, which has exceeded $1 trillion in each of the past four years.

Medicaid in North Carolina currently covers children under 18, some pregnant women, disabled people, select low-income parents and elderly poor.

Advocates for the poor are hoping that state officials change their minds. “You’re going to have more and more people realizing that this was a state-level decision to deny them access to health insurance,” Linker said.

Based on interviews with two leaders of the state House Health and Human Services committee, North Carolina’s decision will not be reversed any time soon.

Rep. Justin Burr, a Republican representing Montgomery and Stanly counties and co-chairman of the committee, said he’s “very skeptical about any future expansion.”

“So much of our state revenue has been eaten away by the Medicaid budget,” he said. “I certainly don’t think we need to expand an entitlement program.”

Rep. Nelson Dollar, a Republican from Wake County, said the current state Medicaid program, which has experienced cost overruns and chronic billing delays, needs fixing “before consideration can be given as to whether you add an additional 500,000 people to the system.”

He added that the people who would be covered under Medicaid expansion are “relatively healthy and not the ones in most need. If somebody has an emergency and they go to the emergency room, they will always get care.”

Linker, from the Health Access Coalition, said insurance companies have repeatedly found that the people who would be covered by the Medicaid expansion are less healthy than those with private insurance. Also, he said it’s a myth that “anyone can stroll into an emergency room and get free, comprehensive care.”

Hospitals are obligated to stabilize patients who are acutely ill or injured, he said, but they can also pursue patients for payment, which can wreak havoc on the finances of the uninsured.

“Expanding Medicaid boosts the bottom line for medical providers and ensures that people can seek appropriate care at the right place at the right time,” Linker said.

A half-million uninsured

In North Carolina, about 1.5 million residents are uninsured, and about half of them will qualify for subsidies to buy insurance through the online exchange.

The other half – about 630,000 – would have qualified for Medicaid under the expansion, according to census figures. That’s because they have household incomes of less than 138 percent of the federal poverty level; that’s $15,856 for a single person and $32,499 for a family of four.

Of those eligible for Medicaid expansion, about 200,000 qualify for premium subsidies on the insurance exchange because they earn between 100 and 138 percent of the poverty level.

But the poorest of the uninsured, who earn less than 100 percent of the poverty level – $11,490 for a single person and $45,960 for a family of four – are not eligible for subsidies. That’s because authors of the Affordable Care Act assumed they would be covered by the Medicaid expansion.

Mostly these people who earn too little to get subsidies are non-disabled adults without children. They are “literally too poor to be eligible,” said Madison Hardee, a lawyer with Legal Services of the Southern Piedmont.

Legal Services is one of three Charlotte agencies that received federal grants to train “navigators” to help consumers use the online insurance marketplace. Because the website hasn’t been working properly since enrollment started Oct. 1, Hardee has been helping clients file paper applications or use North Carolina’s ePASS website to see whether they are eligible for other benefits.

Among those she helped is Lisa Knight, 52, whose household income from her husband’s disability checks is about $15,700 a year.

Uninsured now, Knight has multiple pre-existing conditions, which under the new law can no longer prevent her from getting affordable insurance. She takes medicines for emphysema, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, arthritis pain, depression and anxiety. Her prescriptions cost more than $150 a month. Her doctor prescribed another drug called Spiriva for her breathing problems, but it costs $500 a month.

“I have quit taking it because I can’t afford it,” she said.

Based on her household income, Knight would have qualified for the Medicaid expansion. She also qualifies for a subsidy to buy insurance on the exchange because her income is between 100 and 138 percent of the poverty level.

Knight could buy a “silver” plan – the second least expensive plan on the exchange – for a premium of $5,317 a year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation eligibility calculator for North Carolina. She would be eligible for a subsidy that reduces her premium payment to $314 per year, or 2 percent of her income. Her out-of-pocket maximum for other medical expenses can be no more than $2,250, according to the calculator.

Knight is excited about the chance to enroll: “This is what I’ve been waiting for.”

Hospitals want expansion

Hospitals across the Carolinas had expected the Medicaid expansion would provide insurance for millions of patients who now receive medical care without paying for it.

“This was integral to implementation of the Affordable Care Act,” said Joe Piemont, president and chief operating officer of Carolinas HealthCare System.

In exchange for getting more insured patients, hospitals were also slated under the law to take cuts in other areas, such as Medicare reimbursement. But that delicate balance was thrown off when North Carolina didn’t expand Medicaid. That means millions of patients who have been uninsured will remain so. And they’ll continue using hospital emergency departments without the means to pay.

The annual cost to North Carolina’s hospitals of not expanding Medicaid is estimated to be as much as $660 million, based on an analysis conducted for the N.C. Institute of Medicine by the N.C. Division of Medical Assistance.

Carolinas HealthCare estimates it would have received about $50 million a year in new Medicaid revenues for Charlotte-area hospitals alone if the state had expanded Medicaid. The system also owns hospitals outside this region and doctors’ offices across the Carolinas that will be affected.

Bob Seehausen, senior vice president of Novant Health, said the Winston-Salem-based hospital system estimated it would have received $37 million a year in new Medicaid revenues “to cover people we’ve been treating on an uninsured basis.”

Citing the state’s decision to reject Medicaid expansion, Vidant Health System recently announced plans to close its 60-year-old community hospital in Belhaven in eastern North Carolina.

“Many of these institutions operate close to the margin,” Piemont said. “You just wonder how much they can absorb.”

Expanding Medicaid would have given more patients access to routine doctors’ visits, medicines and hospital care so they wouldn’t have to wait until problems develop into emergencies. “We want people to have access to good, regular health care to help them stay healthy instead of having to treat them at the last minute,” Seehausen said.

Don Dalton, spokesman for the North Carolina Hospital Association, said the group is “having some very intense discussions with our members” about how best to persuade state leaders to reverse their decision.

Mecklenburg County commissioners will also weigh in at their meeting Tuesday night. Democratic commissioner Dumont Clarke and two other commissioners have sponsored a resolution asking legislators to reconsider their decision to reject the Medicaid expansion.

“One of my concerns,” Clarke said, “is the adverse impact this will have on our two big hospital systems. We’re really cutting off our noses to spite our faces.”

Free clinics still needed

Providing nearly universal insurance coverage to Americans – the goal of the Affordable Care Act – might have come close to putting free medical clinics out of business. But the Medicaid coverage gap means those clinics are as important as ever.

Amy Carr, executive director of the Matthews Free Medical Clinic, said most of her clinic’s 700 patients are working people with incomes below the poverty level, which means they would have qualified for Medicaid under an expansion, but make too little to get subsidies on the exchange.

“They remain patients at the clinic,” she said. “We’re just doing business as normal.”

The same is true at North Carolina MedAssist, a Charlotte-based nonprofit that provides free prescription medicines for low-income patients.

Of 10,000 served in a year, 72 percent have incomes below the poverty level. “They will not be helped because their income is too low,” said Lori Giang, executive director of MedAssist.

At a Rotary Club meeting last week, Giang said she described this predicament, and “people were amazed.”

Rizzie Baldwin, of south Charlotte, was also surprised when she began researching the new law’s provisions. Her daughter, Sarah-Hamlin, turned 26 this year and is no longer eligible to stay on her parents’ health insurance.

A hair stylist, Sarah-Hamlin Baldwin works fulltime, bringing in about $12,000 a year. This year, her parents are paying her $200 monthly insurance premiums plus other medical expenses before she reached the $5,000 deductible.

Next year, because her income is more than 100 percent of the poverty level, she’ll qualify for a subsidy on the health insurance exchange. According to the Kaiser calculator, she could get a $2,947 “silver” plan for $240 a year after the subsidy. The maximum out-of-pocket costs for other medical expenses would be $2,250, according to the calculator.

If the state had expanded Medicaid, the federal government would have paid 100 percent of the cost for the first three years.

“I didn’t know exactly how the new law was going to work, but I thought the whole purpose was to get low-income working people like Sarah-Hamlin insured,” Rizzie Baldwin said. “It is our own state legislature that is leaving our daughter out in the cold. This makes no sense to me.”

 

[QueEx]

source: KHOU

Poorest of the poor left out of Affordable Care Act's health insurance expansion

​

Left out, but not by accident.

The Ongoing and Continuing Fight Against Healthcare
Trench Warfare
Funded & Orchestrated by
The Koch Brothers & their Americans for Prosperity
​

<iframe src='http://player.theplatform.com/p/2E2eJC/EmbeddedOffSite?guid=n_maddow_1aca_131021' height='500' width='635' scrolling='no' border='no' ></iframe>


​

 

[michigantoga]

Time to do some reading... Nice thread!...

 

[muckraker10021]

MARCH 2014

Poverty Rates Are A Lot Higher In The South

In fact, as many as one in four Southern kids lives in poverty Source: USDA




Minimum wages are much lower in the South Source: Department Of Labor

Virtually no Southern states, with the exception of Florida, have a minimum wage higher than the federal floor of $7.25 an hour. Many Southern states do have relatively low living costs. But they are not dramatically lower than costs of living in other states, such as Ohio and Missouri, that have set minimum wages at least slightly higher than the national limit. The Southern states are doing the absolute minimum for their poorest citizens by keeping the minimum wage at the lowest levels possible.






People living in the South are a lot less likely to move up the economic ladder Source: Equality Of Opportunity Project

If you want to achieve the American Dream, don't move to the South. That's because states in the South have extremely low levels of economic mobility. In the map above, pale yellow represents places with higher mobility, while red indicates low mobility.




Many living in poverty in the South are being denied access to affordable health care

States that didn't choose to expand Medicaid under Obamacare are highlighted in lighter gray.



Rejecting Obamacare Medicaid expansion is costing these states tons of money $$$$$$$$$$$$$$.

This map shows how much money the 19 states that rejected Medicaid expansion will lose by 2022 as a result of doing so (assuming all other states participate).

MORE-HERE

If only most brain dead Americans could actually think (critical reasoning)

<blockquote>

25% of American adults have not read a single book in the past year; they haven't cracked a paperback, fired up a Kindle, or even hit play on an audiobook while in the car. The number of non-book-readers has nearly tripled since 1978! READ- HERE

</blockquote>