June 2013
13 posts
May 2013
22 posts
“… if you look at a map of which states are refusing the Medicaid expansion, and then look at this report from the Urban Institute, a troubling (if predictable) trend emerges. Approximately a fifth (about 18 percent) of all people who will remain untouched by the Medicaid expansion are black. When you start drilling down to the states where those black people tend to live, it gets worse. In Virginia and North Carolina, 30 percent of those who are going to miss out are black. In South Carolina and Georgia, the number is around 40 percent. In Louisiana and Mississippi, you are talking about 50 percent of those who would be eligible for the expansion but who will go uncovered. You look at Latinos and get a similar (and to some extent worse) picture. Nationally, Latinos make up 18 percent of those who stand to get health coverage. But in Arizona — where the legislature is fighting Jan Brewer’s effort to expand Medicaid — Latinos make up 34 percent of those who stand to gain coverage. In Florida, they make up 27 percent, and in Texas they make up 47 percent. Texas has the highest rate of uninsured in the country. The majority of people there who are going to miss out on care — over 60 percent — are black and Latino. This is one reason why color-blind — “lift all boats” — policy so often falls short. When you have a country grappling with the deep vestiges of bigoted policy, you do not need “colored only” signs to get “colored mostly” effects.”
—Health Care and Social Justice - Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Atlantic (via dendroica)
“Texas will not be held hostage by the Obama administration’s attempt to force us into this fool’s errand of adding more than a million Texans to a broken system.”
—Gov. Rick Perry, Texas Will Deny Health Coverage To 1.5 Million Low-Income Residents - ThinkProgress (via brooklynmutt)
