Democrats’ Plans for Universal Health Care Helps Red States Most

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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.