Kentucky Big Winner of Health Care Reform

Yes, it's Facts and Science Day here at Blue in the Bluegrass. The latest is from Zandar, who finds some eye-opening research on health care reform:

An interesting breakdown of which states would stand to gain the most from health care reform...and which states would have the most to lose.

Here’s how our categorization of states works—we classified states as “High Benefit” if the percentage of uninsured is above the national average and as “Low Benefit” if the rate is less than the national average. We then classified states by whether they would be “High Cost”—the top half of the distribution—for each of the financing approaches.

As Exhibit 1 shows, the states most likely to “win” as a result of health care reform are Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Utah. All of these states have a relatively high number of uninsured and all are in the bottom half of states in terms of cost under both financing mechanisms.

SNIP

It’s interesting to examine the distribution of states’ winner-loser status relative to political alignment. Support for reform has been restricted to Democrats, with only one Republican House member supporting reform and all Senate Republicans opposing. When we examine the seven states most likely to be winners under reform, we see a combined split in their Senate delegations of twelve Republicans versus two Democrats. The three states most likely to lose under health care reform are collectively represented by four Democrats and two Republicans. When we add in the group that would be losers under the income-tax option, the split becomes even stronger, with these states being represented by eighteen Democrats and four Republicans.

The overall pattern therefore shows a curious alignment: States with the most to gain under health care reform are overwhelmingly represented by Republicans, while those states likely to do worse are much more likely to have Democratic senators.

Ding ding ding ding!

Stop and think about this. The states that have the most to gain from health care reform legislation are overwhelmingly red states with Republican Senators. Likewise, those who are going to have to pay are blue states and D.C. and as a result, if you were trying to reverse the slide of the Democrats in the South, you'd want to pass health care reform. If you're a Republican, you would try to do everything you can to convince your constituents that this would be the most vile and evil legislation ever conceived.

There's nothing curious about it. It's designed this way. It's something good and beneficial for the Dems, and 100% political to the GOP. It really is that simple. They don't care if you live or die. They just want your vote.

Read the whole thing.

You really don't need to see the polls showing that the very Kentuckians who would benefit most from health care reform are those who most obediently oppose it, do you?