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Study: These Are the Healthiest and Least Healthy States in the US

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The United Health Foundation has released its annual report of the healthiest and least healthy states in the U.S.

According to the foundation’s website, “America’s Health Rankings” were based off of the World Health Organization’s holistic view of health.

“Health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity,” reads WHO’s definition.

“The model reflects that determinants of health directly influence health outcomes. A health outcomes category and four categories of health determinants are included in the model: behaviors, community & environment, policy and clinical care,” the United Health Foundation said.

The study looked at a variety of different factors affecting a population’s health, including lack of physical activity and obesity rates, smoking and drug deaths. It also explored environmental factors such as air pollution and the number of health care providers available across a state, according to CBS News.

The foundation said the top five healthiest states in the U.S. were Massachusetts, Hawaii, Vermont, Utah and Connecticut.

This year, Massachusetts knocked Hawaii out of the top spot due largely to the accessibility of health care in the state. The Bay State has not only the largest number of dentists and primary care physicians per capita, but also the highest concentration of mental health care providers, according to CBS.

Utah has apparently also shown one of the greatest improvements. Factors in that state’s rise include reduced air pollution and an increase in immunization rates among children.

Ranking in the bottom five were West Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi.

Those five states have not budged much, as shown by past rankings. Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Louisiana all maintained their positions from last year, while West Virginia fell three places to number 46.

Alabama had the lowest number of mental health professionals — 85 per 100,000 people vs. 547.3 per 100,000 for Massachusetts.

After Utah, Florida was noted for making vast improvements. Ranking at number 32, the study found positive changes in childhood poverty rates and levels of mental stress in the state since last year.

Meanwhile, North Dakota saw the sharpest decline, falling seven places to number 18. The study noted ratings for smoking and Salmonella — as well as the amount of children being immunized in the state — as major factors.

The United Health Organization listed rising rates of premature deaths and an uneven concentration of health care providers across the country as a cause for concern. (For more from the author of “Study: These Are the Healthiest and Least Healthy States in the US” please click HERE)

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How Does Your State Rank in Church Attendance?

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A new Gallup poll offers some clues about Americans’ church attendance—and the sizeable difference depending on the state where you live.

Gallup asked 177,030 American adults, “How often do you attend church, synagogue or mosque—at least once a week, almost every week, about once a month, seldom or never?” It ranked all 50 states and the District of Columbia according to how many responded that they attend religious services “at least once a week.”

Residents of Utah are most likely to attend a religious service weekly. According to Gallup, Utah owes its No. 1 ranking to Mormons, who “have the highest religious service attendance of any major religious group in the U.S.”

Utah is followed by Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Arkansas.

[Editor’s note: Alaska ranks in the bottom ten states in the nation for church attendance, along with Colorado, Hawaii, Connecticut, and Vermont. Only one out of four Alaskans attend church regularly]

(Read more about each states rank in church attendance HERE)

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Let’s Not Double-Down on a Failing Medicaid Program

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In a few short weeks Gov. Tom Corbett will go before the state legislature and submit his FY 2013-14 budget. One vital decision the governor and our state leaders will have to make is whether to expand Pennsylvania’s Medicaid program beyond the nearly 20 percent of the population already covered. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), also known as Obamacare, mandated the expansion to include all individuals below 133 percent of the federal poverty level – $30,000 for a family of four; however, last summer the Supreme Court held this mandate was too onerous for states.

Now it is up to Pennsylvania to decide whether it will expand this broken, costly program. Given the difficult budget choices the state has already had to make in recent years to balance its books, as required by law, the answer is very simple: Pennsylvania should join the growing list of states choosing not to expand. To embrace expansion would crowd out vital funding to our schools and universities, to rebuilding our roads and bridges, and to those social welfare programs to which our state is already committed.

Last month, the governor made the wise decision not to establish a state level health care exchange in Pennsylvania, joining 24 other states and protecting hardworking Pennsylvania families from burdensome government overreach.

Corbett stated: “It would be irresponsible to put Pennsylvanians on the hook for an unknown amount of money to operate a system under rules that have not been fully written.”

What is true in the case of creating a health exchange is even more so in the case of Medicaid expansion.

Pennsylvania currently has 2.4 million people enrolled in the failing Medicaid program. The program accounts for nearly one-third of the state’s budget costing taxpayers $8.2 billion in 2012. Overall welfare spending by the state was $10.5 billion (almost 40 percent of the entire budget). The Medicaid expansion would add between 800,000 and 1 million people to the rolls by 2022, burdening an already overworked system and exploding state spending. Even after the federal government’s generous cost-sharing, the cost of expanding the program is $2.8 billion by 2022 according to a recent report from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The federal government seeks to entice Pennsylvania and other states into expanding their programs by promising to pay all the upfront costs during the initial years and then pulls back in the outlying ones. However, this promise is not altogether true. The head of the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare, Gary Alexander, testified before a congressional committee last month that the expansion would cost $222 million to the state taxpayers in administrative and other costs during the first year, $378 million the second year and $364 million the third year, rising to an estimated $883 million by fiscal year 2020-21.

Even that is not the end of the story regarding the open-ended nature of taking part in the Medicaid expansion. President Obama indicated in his 2013 budget that the federal government may renege on its 90 percent payment promise putting Pennsylvanians on the hook much more than the estimated $2.8 billion dollar cost for the expansion. Given the current fiscal realities in Washington, a decrease in the matching amount is an almost certainty. Given the current fiscal realities in Harrisburg, this new financial burden on the state’s already stretched thin budget is something Pennsylvania cannot afford without further putting the pinch on educating our youth along with other crucial spending needs in the state, which have had to undergo hundreds of millions of dollars in spending cuts in recent years to balance the budget.

The real white elephant in the room is the broken Medicaid program. Even with its high cost, Medicaid on average pays 55 cents for every dollar compared to private insurance. That’s even worse than Medicare, which pays 77 cents on the dollar. Many doctors reject the Medicaid patients outright due to the underpayments and thousands of pages of regulations. According to an August study in the Journal of Health Affairs, 32 percent of Pennsylvania’s doctors will not even accept new Medicaid patients.

Medicaid can be fixed, but is going to require the federal government to give the states more flexibility. A few have been granted waivers including Indiana, which established health savings accounts for Medicaid recipients: a free market reform proven to help lower costs. The best fix to the 50-year-old program would be for all the states to have their Medicaid funding block granted (as was successfully implemented with welfare reform in the 1990s) with no strings attached, and no illusory promises from the federal government. Then Pennsylvania and other states will be able to innovate and find the best, most cost effective ways to cover those in need of medical coverage.

Rather than doubling down on failure, Pennsylvania should not expand the Medicaid program beyond the nearly 20 percent of its population already covered. Let’s not make an open-ended promise Pennsylvania cannot keep to a program badly in need of a cure.

Randall DeSoto is the political director for Americans for Prosperity-Pennsylvania.

Republican Governors’ Plan To Eliminate Income Taxes Comes Under Scrutiny

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Several Republican governors are proposing an end to their state income taxes in exchange for closing loopholes including mortgage deductions — plans to make their states more competitive in the U.S. economy but already being criticized by Democrats.

Gov. Dave Heineman, Nebraska, and Bobby Jindal, Louisiana, earlier this week proposed eliminating the tax on residents and corporations.

Meanwhile, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback proposed lower taxes for all residents in exchange for eliminating the tax deduction for interest paid on home mortgages.

Brownback’s mortgage-interest proposal is to help close a budget shortfall and was rejected last year by the state’s General Assembly.

He has been working for at least a year toward ending state income taxes and announced his plan Tuesday as part of his balanced budget proposal for fiscal 2014 and 2015.

Read more from this story HERE.

Conservative-led states creating far more jobs than those supporting Obama

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In each of the States that elected Republican governors during the Tea Party dominated 2010 midterm elections, unemployment rates have gone down. According to an Examiner.com analysis, since Tea Party Republicans took over in January 2011, the average reduction in unemployment for those 17 States has been 1.35%. When compared nationally, job creation in those States has been 50% better than the rest of the country.

The unemployment rate in States that elected “progressive” Democrats in 2010 saw a drop in rates that did no better than the .9% national rate of decline.  In at least one of these “progressive”-run states, the unemployment rate actually went up, not down. New York’s jobless rate increased from 8.2% to 8.6%, an increase of 0.4%.

Compare that lackluster performance to a solid decrease in unemployment in each of the 17 States that elected fiscally Conservative governors back in 2010:  Michigan -2.4%, Florida -2.3%, Nevada -2.2%, Alabama -1.9%, Ohio -1.7%, Tennessee -1.6%, South Carolina -1.5%, Georgia -1.2%, Wyoming -1.1%, Iowa -1.0%, New Mexico -1.0%, Wisconsin -0.9%, Kansas -0.8%, South Dakota -0.7%, Maine -0.6%, Pennsylvania -0.6%.

This is another substantiated example of how, when compared to fiscally Conservative Tea Party solutions, “progressive” economic policies fall short. It also blows a gigantic hole in the “we’re-making-progress-but-can’t-go-back-to-policies-that-caused-our-economic-problems” talking points lie that “progressives” insist on repeating ad nauseam.

This also indicates that the real problem in America is “progressive” ideas, which have been being imported into the United States from Europe since the early 20th century. Since then, these “progressive” ideas – hostile to the Republic envisioned by our Founders – have managed to infiltrate and infest both of America’s major political Parties.

The Republican vs. Democrat political paradigm is obsolete. This is especially true where economic policies and government power are concerned. To more accurately describe the philosophical divide in today’s political landscape, think Patriots vs. “progressives.”

It should be noted, “progressives” easily occupy a space within the “globalist” category. Globalism is a clear and present danger to the very concept of national sovereignty . . . any nation’s national sovereignty. Be assured, United States sovereignty is being targeted; “progressives” are eagerly playing a large part in this.

Patriots want the United States to follow the Constitution, which limits the size, scope, reach and power of the central government to that prescribed by the Constitution. “Progressives” wish to “evolve” beyond America’s foundation document, favoring a central government that usurps the maximum amount of power possible from the States and from the people.

Although many Americans supported the invasion of Iraq and George W. Bush’s strong backing of the U.S. military, a careful examination of his Presidency shows that Bush increased the size and cost of the federal government. He created the DHS, a large, expensive and essentially unnecessary Cabinet level bureaucracy. If the underlying cause of the 9/11 terrorist attacks was the FBI and the CIA not sharing information, that could have been rectified with the proper use of an Executive Order directing the two intelligence agencies to share pertinent data. Bush also greatly expanded the size, cost and presence of the TSA. Remember that the next time your 87 year old grandmother or four year old niece is being openly groped by an overly-controlling faux uniformed union member who can probably never be fired.

Bush also worked with a Republican majority Legislature to enact Medicare part D, which imposed that financial burden onto the States. Near the end of his Presidency he and his Goldman Sachs Treasurer promoted TARP, which put taxpayers on the hook to the tune of $700 billion. The Feds then used some of that money to bail out GM and Chrysler.  And, of course, we also have Bush’s role in adding $5 trillion to the national debt, War Powers Act issues, and nominating the current Supreme Court Chief Justice, who recently sided with “progressives” in preserving the biggest, farthest reaching government power grab in U.S. history.

Like it or not, the results of George W. Bush’s presidency indicate that in many instances he acted as a “progressive” Republican.

The chief discernible distinction between “progressive” Democrats and “progressive” Republicans is the rate at which government grows and individual Liberty is lost.

The government of the United States needs to shrink, not grow. Europe has been growing their governments decade after decade after decade. That is one of the major reasons why their economies are failing. “Progressives” are trying to make America more and more like Europe. Increasing government spending while expanding the size and scope of government bureaucracies and increasing the people’s dependency on government is not the way to fix a problem caused by big government spending, bloated bureaucracies and government dependency.

The last time America had an anyone like a patriot in the Oval Office was Ronald Reagan. Under the influence of the anti-American “progressive” economic policies of Obama, America’s GDP growth is currently 1.9%. At this point in his first term, under the influence of Reagan’s pro-American economic policies, America’s GDP growth was 7.2%.

For the America envisioned by its Founders to survive, “progressives” must be stopped. Forget the (R) and the (D). These political Party designations are growing increasingly meaningless. Voters need to realign their thinking and begin voting for Patriots and against “progressives”, regardless of Party affiliation.

If “progressives” currently living in America want to live in a European country doomed to economic failure, they can move to Europe. They would be doing America a favor. An even bigger favor would be if they sent disenfranchised Europeans who want to live the American way to the United States. America would definitely benefit from that exchange.

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Michael Fell is a former MCA recording artist from the seminal punk rock era who toured America from coast to coast. Today, he’s a leading voice in the L.A. Tea Party movement, active since the February 2009 inception. Mr. Fell currently chairs the Westwood Tea Party, is a founding member of the L.A. Metro Tea Party Coalition, serves as the Vice Chairman of the Westside Republicans Club in L.A. CA, and is an elected Republican delegate to the L.A. 47th AD Central Committee. He’s been Campaign Manager for a primary winning Congressional candidate, as well as Santa Monica and L.A. City Council candidates.  Mr. Fell is a contributing writer for https://conservativedailynews.com/, https://rightwingnews.com/, https://www.hollywoodrepublican.net/, https://beforeitsnews.com, https://www.redcounty.com/, https://www.uspatriotpac.com and, https://westsiderepublicans.com/.  His opinions on today’s news events and political climate can be found on his blog: https://mjfellright.wordpress.com/

 

Photo credit:  andyarthur