Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Universal health care in the deep south?
Check out this editorial. Coming as it does from The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, it's quite a strong statement in favor of universal, guaranteed health care:
Neither the Senate nor House bills gets to the heart of the health care insurance issue: a national plan providing universal coverage within the context of a private-sector health-care economy.
The experience of other advanced industrial democracies with nationalized, single-payer health-care programs isn't compelling - except in the provision of a guaranteed level of insurance for all.
It's got the obligatory Europe-bashing, but in essence it's a call for a government-guaranteed floor of health care. That's pretty radical for a state that's got Haley Barbour in the governor's mansion. But maybe that should be no surprise. Mississippi has a 17.9% uninsured rate, 11th highest in the country. As the editorial notes, insurance is becoming an increasingly middle-class woe, with reduced coverage by employers leaving even the moderately well-off without an affordable pool to enter.
When local papers in deep red states cry out for comprehensive reform, that's a warning sign we're reaching a tipping point where the concerns of the poor become the anxieties of the middle class. And once that trend matures, it'll reflect itself in vote totals. If something in this equation doesn't change, the red states may soon prove themselves red in a very different sense of the word. But, don't worry, they'll still hate Europe.
Neither the Senate nor House bills gets to the heart of the health care insurance issue: a national plan providing universal coverage within the context of a private-sector health-care economy.
The experience of other advanced industrial democracies with nationalized, single-payer health-care programs isn't compelling - except in the provision of a guaranteed level of insurance for all.
It's got the obligatory Europe-bashing, but in essence it's a call for a government-guaranteed floor of health care. That's pretty radical for a state that's got Haley Barbour in the governor's mansion. But maybe that should be no surprise. Mississippi has a 17.9% uninsured rate, 11th highest in the country. As the editorial notes, insurance is becoming an increasingly middle-class woe, with reduced coverage by employers leaving even the moderately well-off without an affordable pool to enter.
When local papers in deep red states cry out for comprehensive reform, that's a warning sign we're reaching a tipping point where the concerns of the poor become the anxieties of the middle class. And once that trend matures, it'll reflect itself in vote totals. If something in this equation doesn't change, the red states may soon prove themselves red in a very different sense of the word. But, don't worry, they'll still hate Europe.
