Democrats’ Plans for Universal Health Care Helps Red States Most

Membership Ticker

You come to Mother Jones for unique journalism, and we love doing it for you—especially at a moment like this. That's really it. That's the upshot of our fall fundraising drive, and we're hoping to raise $250,000 in a much shorter than normal three-week window, by November 5, so we can keep right on doing it. Please pitch in early to help us get there.

$250,000

You come to Mother Jones for unique journalism, and we love doing it for you. That's it. That's the upshot of our fall fundraising drive, and we're hoping to raise $250,000 in a shorter than normal three-week window so we can keep right on doing it.

Fight disinformation. Get a daily recap of the facts that matter. Sign up for the free Mother Jones newsletter.

Let’s say a Democrat wins the 2008 election and institutes universal health care. Who benefits the most? Republicans.

That’s right — a new study shows that the red states (mostly in the South) consistently rate at the bottom of the country in terms of health care for residents. The Commonwealth Fund report ranked states according to 32 indicators of health care access, quality, outcomes, and hospital use. Consider the political leanings of the top ten and the bottom ten.

States 1-10: Hawaii, Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, South Dakota.

States 50-41: Oklahoma, Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, Nevada, Louisiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Florida, Georgia.

This shouldn’t be a surprise. States led by Republicans are more likely to have laissez faire attitudes towards health care and be less sympathetic to the plights of those who cannot afford it. It doesn’t help that these states are often the most hostile towards workers’ rights, thus driving down wages, and often have the highest number of single mothers, due to the nation’s highest rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births. Get all the details and schadenfreude at PERRspectives Blog.