The Shame of America's Health Care System

In recent posts I have looked at the findings of studies that have shown the true nature of America's health care system (assuming one can even use the term "system" to such a broken scheme) as the most expensive in the world and one of the least efficient in its delivery of medical care.  America places dead last compared to systems in other advanced nations in terms of quality of care for money spent.  The New York Times picked up on these same findings and made it the focus of its main page editorial yesterday.  Here are excerpts:

Even as Americans struggle with the changes required by health care reform, an international survey released last week by the Commonwealth Fund, a research organization, shows why change is so necessary.  

The report found that by virtually all measures of cost, access to care and ease of dealing with insurance problems, Americans fared poorly compared with people in other advanced countries. The survey covered 20,000 adults in the United States and 10 other industrial nations — Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Britain, all of which put in place universal or near-universal health coverage decades ago. The United States spends far more than any of these countries on a per capita basis and as a percent of the national economy. 

For that, it gets meager results. Some 37 percent of American adults went without recommended care, did not see a doctor when sick or failed to fill prescriptions in the past year because of costs, compared with 4 percent in Britain and 6 percent in Sweden. Nearly a quarter of American adults could not pay medical bills or had serious problems paying them

The complexity of the American insurance system is also an issue. Some 32 percent of consumers spent a lot of time on insurance paperwork or in disputes with their insurer over denials of payment for services they thought were covered. 

The Affordable Care Act was created to address these problems by covering tens of millions of uninsured people and providing subsidies to help many of them pay for policies; by setting limits on the out-of-pocket costs that patients must bear; and by requiring that all policies cover specified benefits. 

The reform law, however imperfect, is needed to bring the dysfunctional American health care system up to levels already achieved in other advanced nations. 

Frighteningly, the Republicans want to scrap the Affordable Health Care Act and slash Medicare and Medicaid thus leaving even more Americans without access to health care.  And this from the political party that pretends to honor Christian values.  The hypocrisy is unbelievable.

The GOP's Mission to Destroy Medicaid Expansion

One of the biggest examples to my mind of Republican and Christofasist/Tea Party hypocrisy revolves around the effort to kill Medicaid expansion and the Affordable Health Care Act.  These people blather incessantly about upholding Christian values and congratulate themselves almost daily about the piety and religiosity even as they seek to deprive the health care access to millions of the poor and unfortunate.    The Gospel directive to tend the sick means nothing to these foul modern day Pharisees.  To them, the poor - especially if they are not white - are trash to be thrown on the garbage heap.  A column in the New York Times looks at the disingenuous excuses being up forward by the  Republicans and Christofasist/Tea Party crowd to kill health care reform.  Here are highlights:

The real threat remains the effort of conservative groups to sabotage reform, especially by blocking the expansion of Medicaid. This effort relies heavily on lobbying, lavishly bankrolled by the usual suspects, including the omnipresent Koch brothers. But it’s not just money: the right has also rolled out some really lousy arguments.

And I don’t just mean lousy as in “bad”; I also mean it in the original sense, “infested with lice.”

Before I get there, a word about something that, as far as we can tell, isn’t happening. Remember “rate shock”? A few months ago it was all the rage in right-wing circles, with supposed experts claiming that Americans were about to face huge premium increases. 

It quickly became clear, however, that what these alleged experts were doing was comparing apples and oranges — and as Ezra Klein of The Washington Post pointed out, oranges that, in many cases, you can’t even buy. Specifically, they were comparing the premiums young, healthy men were paying before reform with the premiums everyone — including those who previously couldn’t get insurance because of pre-existing conditions — will pay under the new system. Oh, and they also weren’t taking into account the subsidies many Americans will receive, reducing their costs. 

Now, about those lousy Medicaid arguments: Last year’s Supreme Court decision upholding the Affordable Care Act did strike down one provision, the one that would have forced all states to accept an expansion of Medicaid, the already-existing program of health insurance for the poor. States are now free to reject that expansion. Yet how can states justify turning down a federal offer to insure thousands of their citizens, one that would cost them nothing in the first year and only trivial amounts later? Sheer spite — the desire to sabotage anything with President Obama’s name on it — is the real reason, but doesn’t sound too good. So they need intellectual cover. 

Enter the same experts, more or less, who warned about rate shock, to declare that Medicaid actually hurts its recipients. Their evidence? Medicaid patients tend to be sicker than the uninsured, and slower to recover from surgery. 

The application to Medicaid should be obvious. Sick people are likely to have low incomes; more generally, low-income Americans who qualify for Medicaid just tend in general to have poor health. So pointing to a correlation between Medicaid and poor health as evidence that Medicaid actually hurts its recipients is as foolish as claiming that lice make you healthy. It is, as I said, a lousy argument. 

And the reliance on such arguments is itself deeply revealing, because it illustrates the right’s intellectual decline. I mean, this is the best argument their so-called experts can come up with for their policy priorities? 

Meanwhile, many states are still planning to reject the Medicaid expansion, denying essential health care to millions of needy Americans. And they have no good excuse for this act of cruelty.

Government Shut Down - The GOP Obsession with Obamacare

So far many of the dire warnings of the GOP demagogues about Obamacare have failed to come to fruition and in a number of states it appears that premiums will be less expensive that the doomsday Cassandras predicted.  It seems that other than the Tea Party/Christofascist crowd, the only folks screaming are greedy business owners who view employees as modern day serfs and similarly greedy doctors who claim poverty while living far better than most of the populace (I have yet to meet a poor doctor in my legal practice - I tend to avoid them as clients because most are obnoxious and don't want to pay for services rendered).  So why is the GOP willing to shut down the federal government that will harm vast numbers of individuals and businesses?  A column in the Washington Post looks at the GOP obsession with destroying Obamacare and throwing millions of Americans back into an uninsured status. Here are highlights:

With the right wing in full-throttle defund-Obamacare mode, everyone seems to be wondering whether the August recess will bring a rerun of the now-mythical Summer of ’09, when the Tea Party came into its own and changed the national conversation on health care. One question seems to be whether the continuing Obamacare obsession will eclipse immigration reform.

But the Asheville Citizen Times of North Carolina offers an account of something else entirely: A GOP Congressman, Patrick McHenry, getting confronted by a constituent — one Skip Edwards — who is upset with his votes to repeal Obamacare, because of his own medical and financial situation. What’s particularly interesting is Rep. McHenry’s claim that he supports parts of the Affordable Care Act, chiefly the bit prohibiting discrimination against people with preexisting conditions:

Edwards and his wife, both 63, had health insurance until he lost his job during the recessio

n and the East Asheville couple found themselves in financial trouble despite staying relatively healthy.

Edwards and others wondered why McHenry would vote against a plan they feel is better than nothing at all. He said he would not vote for something he feels is bad policy.

McHenry floated a few familiar GOP solutions — allowing the buying of insurance across state lines and increasing competition — but Edwards said he wasn’t satisfied.

It’s easy to rail about Obamacare’s evils inside the safe confines of the conservative media echo chamber. But it may not be so easly for GOP lawmakers to explain to their constituents that they support repealing specific provisions in Obamacare, i.e., the ban on discrimination against preexisting conditions. 

[A]s unpopular as Obamacare admittedly remains, the battle over health care in 2014 may also be partly decided by the prosaic question of which side is perceived as genuinely wanting to fix our health care system. It remains to be seen whether suggestions such as those McHenry offered will be enough.

On top of this, conservative are putting heavy pressure on GOP lawmakers not just to keep trying to repeal Obamacare, but to shut down the government to force an Apocalyptic stand against the law. If it’s hard to explain repealing certain parts of the law, how will GOP lawmakers explain shutting down the government to defund it?

It also remains to be seen whether such episodes will get anywhere near the play that will likely be lavished on tales of Obamacare implementation going awry. Sure, constituents who don’t want the law’s provisions taken away may not be wearing funny three cornered hats or holding up signs proclaiming that tyranny has arrived on American shores, so they may not get much media attention. But surely they are an important part of the story, too.

Truth be told, the GOP simply doesn't care about a vast portion of the American population.  We're disposable garbage,  especially if we are black, Hispanic, or gay.

Study: Single-Payer Healthcare System Would Save Billions

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Republicans talk about wanting to cut government spending and and disingenuously pretend to care about average Americans yet oppose basically any meaningful change to the nation's sadly deficient healthcare system, preferring instead to allow hospital systems, pharmaceutical companies and other sectors of the medical field to rake in billions of dollars.  Meanwhile, millions of Americans go without medical care and millions more forgo  preventive care because of the cost.  Now, a new study confirms that a single payer system would save billions of dollars every year and provide a huge cut in government spending.  Will the Republicans support it?  Of course not - that would be the opposite of their reverse Gospel message agenda of taking from the poor to give to the rich.  The Hill has details on the study findings:

Expanding the nation’s Medicare program to cover people of all ages would save the government billions of dollars, according to a new study released Wednesday.

The study found that a single-payer health care system based on the principles of legislation by Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.), the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, would save the federal government about $592 billion in one year.

That’s more than enough to pay for comprehensive benefits for all Americans at a lower cost to the public, according to Physicians for a National Health Program, which circulated the study. The extra money would go to paying down the national debt.

The savings would come from slashing administrative waste and negotiating drug prices.

The study was conducted by Gerald Friedman, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

“Paradoxically, by expanding Medicare to everyone we’d end up saving billions of dollars annually,” Friedman said. “We’d be safeguarding Medicare’s fiscal integrity while enhancing the nation’s health for the long term.”

The study comes as Republicans in Congress are pulling out all the stops to repeal President Obama’s health care overhaul. Tea Party Republicans have in recent weeks vowed to oppose any measures to keep the government running after the current funding bill runs out on Sept. 30 if it also means funding ObamaCare.

Here are some excerpts from the study on our broken system:

For decades, health care costs have risen much faster than income in the United States. As a result, total health care spending has risen from 5% of Gross Domestic Product in 1960 to nearly 18% today. While some of the increase in costs in the United States is due, as in other countries, to improvements incare , innovative technologies and greater longevity, costs have risen much faster in the United States than elsewhere because of the growing administrative burden of our private health

insurance system.

 

Because of the large number of separate insurance programs and the fragmented billing system, American physicians and hospitals incur much greater costs for billing and insurance-related activities than do their foreign counterparts. Compared with doctors in Ontario, Canada, for example, Americans spend nearly four times as much on billing and insurance related

activities ($83,000 per physician versus $22,000 in Ontario), and nursing staff, including medical assistants, spent 20.6 hours per physician per week interacting with health plans – nearly ten times that of their Ontario counterparts.

 

In addition to the administrative savings within provider offices, a single payer system could lead to dramatic savings by negotiating reduced prices for pharmaceuticals which cost approximately 60% more in the U.S. than in Europe.

 

A single-payer system would eliminate most of these costs, raising the share of spending going to providers up to the 98% rate for Medicare. With almost a trillion dollars in premiums paid into private health insurance, lowering the administrative ratio to the Medicare rate would save over $197 billion.

There's much, much more, but the foregoing gives the tone of the findings, all of which are common sense.

 

The GOP Is Terrified of Obamacare Because It Could Work

With all the huge problems facing America at the moment the Congressional Republicans have lots of things that they could be doing.  But their number one obsession is thwarting the Affordable Health Care Act - a/k/a Obamacare - as evidenced by the ridiculous number of votes for its repeal in the GOP controlled House of Representatives.   Why?  First, because these cretins cannot grasp that we are already paying the cost of treating the uninsured through exorbitantly high medical cost which are inflated to recapture all the monies written off by hospitals and other providers.  We have the least efficient and cost effective system of any advanced nation.  Second, and most importantly, they are terrified that Obamacare might actually work and destroy all of their claims and doom saying.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the phenomenon.  Here are story excerpts:

I know, we’re all supposed to think the End Is Nigh because the government has decided to give the 10 percent of large employers who don’t insure their workers another 365 days to do so before levying a small penalty. This could not possibly be a reasonable accommodation to protect jobs and businesses, because as everybody knows, this president hates jobs and businesses.

No, this brief delay must be a sign that the implementation of the Affordable Care Act is destined to result in abject failure. After all, that’s what every Congressional Republican with the ability to hit send on a press release has told us, over and over again, hoping that repeating their prediction enough times will somehow make it true.

But here’s my question: if Republicans are so confident Obamacare will end badly, why not just shut up about it? It’s not like they have the votes to repeal the law—a math problem they still haven’t solved after 37 different tries. Their appeal to the Supreme Court ended in defeat at the hands of a conservative chief justice. And now the bulk of the plan will begin to take effect in just a few months.

At this point, why not sit back and wait for this crazy experiment to self-destruct? Why not let President Obama and the Democrats reckon with the millions of angry Americans who will undoubtedly hate their new insurance or their new insurance protections?

Because Republicans are terrified that Obamacare could actually work. Already, the law has provided 54 million Americans free access to preventive services like check-ups and mammograms. More than six million seniors have saved more than six billion dollars on their prescriptions. Nearly thirteen million consumers have received more than one billion dollars in rebates from insurance companies that had overcharged them. There are more than three million happy young adults who have been allowed to stay on their parents’ health insurance until they turn 26. And in California, a state that represents one-fifth of the U.S. economy, we’ve learned that premiums for the law’s new insurance options have come in lower­ than expected.

As these successes build, Republicans are naturally coping with their fear the only way they know how: by scaring the hell out of everyone else.
[T]oday, the anti-government zealots who have taken over the once-proud Republican Party feel they must burn our village to save it. They are actively trying to prevent Americans who have been too poor or sick to get health insurance from knowing that all three branches of their democratically elected government have passed and upheld a law that will finally allow them to see a doctor without going broke.

[T]here is now plenty of evidence that if we as a nation want Obamacare to work, it will work; that if we can extract ourselves from the trench warfare that preceded the passage of the law, we can all start focusing on fixing and improving it over the next year. 

GOP Controlled States Refusing To Expand Medicaid Will Lose Billions

Sadly, a number of GOP controlled states put sabotaging what they call "Obamacare" ahead of the welfare of hundreds of thousands of their citizens who lack meaningful healthcare coverage.   It's the height of stupidity because the uninsured will eventually end up at non-profit hospitals which will have to write off huge amounts of billings for the uninsured and then jack up pricing for everyone else to recoup the loses.  The cretins in the GOP base are simply too stupid to realize they are already paying for the uninsured except it's in the least cost effective manner possible.  And no one among the GOP elected officials has the balls to tell the lunatic party base that they are idiots.  And that's not even considering the hypocrisy of claiming to honor Christian principles while throwing away thousands of individuals as if they were trash.  Oh, but then one must remember than many of the uninsured are minorities and to the racist GOP base apparently do not count as really human.  It's disgusting.  A piece in Think Progress looks at the situation.  Here are highlights:

The GOP-controlled states who continue to resist expanding their Medicaid programs under Obamacare are making a short-sighted financial decision, according to a new analysis from the Rand Corporation. The 14 states whose governors have indicated that they won’t accept the optional Medicaid expansion will lose out on $8.4 billion in federal funding while leaving an additional 3.6 million Americans uninsured.

The federal government currently pays for about 57 percent of the cost of each state’s Medicaid program — but under Obamacare, it will pick up the total cost of expanding the program to cover additional uninsured Americans, gradually reducing that federal contribution to 90 percent. That increased federal funding, as well as the savings that result from fewer uninsured patients unable to foot their medical bills, could ultimately save all 50 states as much as $18.1 billion a year by Rand’s estimations.

“Our analysis shows it’s in the best economic interests of states to expand Medicaid under the terms of the federal Affordable Care Act,” Carter Price, the study’s lead author, explained in a press release. “State policymakers should be aware that if they do not expand Medicaid, fewer people will have health insurance, and that will trigger higher state and local spending for uncompensated medical care.”

And Rand’s $8.4 billion figure could actually be an underestimation. The study focused on the 13 states that have already flat-out refused to participate in Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion as well as another state, Iowa, that is pursuing an alternative to the policy. But it didn’t include the six states that are leaning toward rejecting the Medicaid expansion — Alaska, Kansas, Nebraska, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming — which could also end up losing money if they officially decide against expanding their public insurance programs. 

Nevertheless, stubborn Obamacare opponents in red states are still refusing to cooperate with any aspect of health reform — even at the expense of their most vulnerable constituents. Some of the nation’s most highly-uninsured states have resisted extending health coverage to additional low-income Americans simply to make a political statement against the health reform law.

"Obamacare" Shock - They System May Work Despite GOP Efforts to Destroy It

I have noted frequently the juxtaposition - dare we say hypocrisy? - of the Republican Party and its Christofascist party base when it comes to claiming to honor Christian values while in the very next breath displaying an utter contempt for the Gospel directive to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and care for the sick.  There doesn't seem to be a single social welfare program that the GOP and its base doesn't want to slash or eliminate.   Particularly those that work to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and care for the sick.  As Paul Krugman notes in a New York Times column, few programs have drawn the wrath of the GOP and far right more than the Affordable Health Care Act, a/k/a "Obamacare."  And now, there are signs that Obamacare may actually deliver much needed healthcare coverage to those most in need.  It's a stunning contrast to the GOP/Christofascist approach of throwing American citizens on the trash heap like garbage.    Here are highlights from Krugman's column:

The Affordable Care Act, a k a Obamacare, goes fully into effect at the beginning of next year, and predictions of disaster are being heard far and wide. There will be an administrative “train wreck,” we’re told; consumers will face a terrible shock. Republicans, one hears, are already counting on the law’s troubles to give them a big electoral advantage. 

Yet important new evidence — especially from California, the law’s most important test case — suggests that the real Obamacare shock will be one of unexpected success. Before I can explain what the news means, I need to make a crucial point: Obamacare is a deeply conservative reform, not in a political sense (although it was originally a Republican proposal) but in terms of leaving most people’s health care unaffected.  

[T]he California bids are in — that is, insurers have submitted the prices at which they are willing to offer coverage on the state’s newly created Obamacare exchange. And the prices, it turns out, are surprisingly low. A handful of healthy people may find themselves paying more for coverage, but it looks as if Obamacare’s first year in California is going to be an overwhelmingly positive experience.

What can still go wrong? Well, Obamacare is a complicated program, basically because simpler options, like Medicare for all, weren’t considered politically feasible. So there will probably be a lot of administrative confusion as the law goes into effect, again especially in states where Republicans have been doing their best to sabotage the process. 

Also, some people are too poor to afford coverage even with the subsidies. These Americans were supposed to be covered by a federally financed expansion of Medicaid, but in states where Republicans have blocked Medicaid expansion, such unfortunates will be left out in the cold. 

Still, here’s what it seems is about to happen: millions of Americans will suddenly gain health coverage, and millions more will feel much more secure knowing that such coverage is available if they lose their jobs or suffer other misfortunes. Only a relative handful of people will be hurt at all. And as contrasts emerge between the experience of states like California that are making the most of the new policy and that of states like Texas whose politicians are doing their best to undermine it, the sheer meanspiritedness of the Obamacare opponents will become ever more obvious. 

So yes, it does look as if there’s an Obamacare shock coming: the shock of learning that a public program designed to help a lot of people can, strange to say, end up helping a lot of people — especially when government officials actually try to make it work.

My principle complaint with Obamacare is that it did not go far enough.  We need a national health care system like France.  Back when I was with a law firm that represented a hospital system, our client cared nothing about the delivery of quality, cost effective medical care.  It was instead all about monopoly wars with other systems and making as much money as possible.  And this was a "non-profit" hospital system.  At the wedding this weekend one of the guests was a friend I have known from high school who just retired from a major healthcare system.  From our conversation, my experience and observations were the norm, not the exception. Cost effective health care for all is the last thing that America's big health care systems want to provide.  And who are these people in bed with?  The GOP and the "godly Christian" folk.

Terry McAuliffe for Governor of Virginia

Last night the boyfriend and I attended a fundraising reception for Terry McAuliffe, the prospective Democrat nominee for Governor of Virginia who will oppose Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli the all but crowned GOP nominee.  It was my first chance to talk with McAuliffe one on one and candidly, I was impressed.  It is hard to stress just how stark the choice Virginians will face in November 2013.  And frankly, the prospect of Cuccinelli in the Governor's mansion ought to terrify anyone rational - which is one reason we are seeing members of the Republican business community attack Cuccinelli and in some cases openly endorse McAuliffe.  McAuliffe is a successful businessman (and ironically, his mother went to my high school) who has a let's work together and get the job done attitude.  Here's a partial summary of the contrasts between McAuliffe and Cuccinelli:

On the one hand there will be McAuliffe who first and foremost isn't a religious fanatic who seeks to impose his religious beliefs on all Virginians.  Indeed, he has come out in support of civil law gay marriage.   In contrast, Cuccinelli is allied with the most vicious and extreme Christofascists in Virginia and seeks to (i) end all abortions in Virginia, (ii) make contraception decisions for women, (iii) keep LGBT Virginians a perpetual under class in terms of civil rights and employment protections.  Cuccinelli may blather about freedom and liberty, but like most of the Christofascist set, his idea of liberty and religious freedom comes down to imposing far right religious beliefs on all citizens and making public policy follow the most extreme beliefs of the far right Christians.

Another huge issue - and one that I confront daily using the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel - is that of transportation funding.  Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads are being strangled economically by the increasingly outdated and inadequate transportation system.  Here as sampling of McAuliffe's view on the problem:

Virginia is a great place for business, but one of the things holding us back from the top is an infrastructure system that can feel outdated and inefficient. In Hampton Roads, commuters are stuck in traffic for 43 hours per year, with a total economic cost of $700 million annually. In Northern Virginia, it’s 67 hours and over $1 billion. And roads and bridges that need repair are a pressing problem all over the Commonwealth.

In February, Governor McDonnell and both parties in the legislature came together to pass a plan to fund transportation that will finally begin to address gridlock. It wasn’t perfect, and there are plenty of things I disagree with, but inaction on transportation was no longer an option.

By focusing on projects that best serve the economic travel needs of our citizens and businesses — along with key safety improvements — we will ensure that those rail, road, and bridge projects that absolutely must get done do get done.

Second, we need to incentivize regional planning and implementation of smart growth planning. Some of our transportation issues aren’t the result of bad roads or transit systems; they’re the result of improper or poorly planned development.

Where is Cuccinelli on the issue?  He is seeking to undo the transportation funding plan passed by the General Assembly last month.  Just yesterday - in a pattern that is standard for Cuccinelli who finds anything he doesn't like to be "unconstitutional" even when the U. S. Supreme Court has ruled otherwise - issued opinions claiming that the transportation funding plan is unconstitutional (as is the Medicaid expansion plan).  Here are highlights from the Virginian Pilot:

Two of the legislature's biggest policy actions this year - approval of a major road-funding bill and inclusion of Medicaid expansion language in the state budget - are legally suspect, according to Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.

One advisory opinion issued Friday by Cuccinelli questions the constitutionality of elements in the transportation bill to assess higher sales taxes in Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia to raise revenue for regional projects.

Cuccinelli's other piece of guidance applies to a provision in Virginia's revised two-year budget that vests a Medicaid expansion decision with a 10-member legislative commission, a delegation of authority that the attorney general considers constitutionally improper.

Both opinions were released in response to earlier requests from Del. Bob Marshall, a Prince William County Republican and key player in the legal challenge that toppled regional taxing authorities created in a sweeping 2007 road-funding bill.

Cuccinelli is a Tea Party extremist - and climate change denier - who opposes any and all tax increases even as Virginia's transportation system is crumbling.   The fact that he is in league with Bob Marshall, perhaps the most delusional lunatic in the General Assembly - speaks volumes about Cuccinelli's extremist views and beliefs.  It is also telling that Cuccinelli's insane lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of laws have been failures across the board.   On the issue of Medicaid expansion, here is McAuliffe's view: 

According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the federal government is offering Virginia $21 billion in funding over seven years to expand our Medicaid program. If we don’t accept the money, it will simply flow to other states. I believe that Virginia taxpayer money should stay in Virginia.

Accepting federal funds for Medicaid has broad bipartisan support: Both very conservative and very liberal Governors have accepted the funds.

Expanding Medicaid will cover nearly 400,000 uninsured Virginians and create up to 33,000 jobs by 2021, according to the Senate Finance Committee. Covering the uninsured for regular visits to the doctor for shots and checkups and life saving cancer screenings and treatment will also help reduce health care costs for those with insurance already.

Despite his claimed religiosity and piousness, Cuccinelli would kick these 400,000 Virginians to the curb.   Sadly, he is like most Christofascists who are best known for who they hate - gays, blacks, non-Christians, Hispanics, etc. - and utterly ignores the Gospel message of aiding the poor, the sick, and the less fortunate.

On the issues, there is really one one decision one can reach: vote for Terry McAuliffe in November.

The Corelation Between Religiosity and Obesity, High Divorce Rates, and Teen Pregnancies

Click image to enlarge

Gallup has a new report on religiosity by state and not surprisingly, other than Utah and Oklahoma, all of the most religious states are in the Deep South.  Meanwhile, the least religious states clustered in the Northwest and in the Northeast.  In a related report, Gallup also found that the highest rates of obesity, lack of health insurance coverage and struggles to subsist were correlated to the most religious states.  First these findings on levels of religiosity (see the chart above as well):

Overall, 40% of Americans nationwide were classified as very religious in 2012 -- based on saying religion is an important part of their daily life and that they attend religious services every week or almost every week. Thirty-one percent of Americans were nonreligious, saying religion is not an important part of their daily life and that they seldom or never attend religious services. The remaining 29% of Americans were moderately religious, saying religion is important in their lives but that they do not attend services regularly, or that religion is not important but that they still attend services.

Eight of the top 10 religious states are in the South -- basically comprising the entire Southern belt from Georgia and the two Carolinas on the Atlantic coast through Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi, to Louisiana and Arkansas in the west. The states outside the Southern belt are Utah -- with its strongly religious majority Mormon population -- and Oklahoma, which straddles the border between the South and the Midwest.

The 12 least religious states comprise the entirety of New England -- Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut -- along with the three most Northwestern states in the union, Alaska, Washington, and Oregon, plus the District of Columbia, Nevada, and Hawaii.

As for social malaise correlating to the most religious states, there are these highilights:

Texas residents continue to be the most likely in the U.S. to lack health insurance (25.5%) in 2012 and those in Massachusetts remain least likely (4.1%).

One in four Mississippi residents report lacking enough money to buy the food they or their families needed at times in the last 12 months -- more than any other state in 2012. North Dakotans were the least likely to struggle to afford food, at 9.6%.

A majority of American adults in all 50 states are either overweight or obese in 2012. West Virginia residents are the most likely to fall into one of these weight groups (69.3%), while Coloradans are least likely (55.1%).

Obesity rates remain highest in many Southern and Midwestern states. Western and Northeastern states still boast the lowest obesity rates in the country. Diabetes and high blood pressure rates follow the same geographic pattern.

As this blog has noted frequently, states in the Bible Belt also have the highest divorce rates and the highest teen pregnancy rates.   Obviously, there is a major discontent between claimed religiosity and actual behavior.  Some might call the phenomenon rank hypocrisy.