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We know that about 10 million more people have insurance coverage this year as a result of the Affordable Care Act but until now it has been difficult to say much about who was getting that Obamacare coverage — where they live, their age, their income and other such details. Now Kevin Quealy and Margot Sanger-Katz report in the NYT that a new data set is providing a clearer picture of which people gained health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. The data is the output of a statistical model based on a large survey of adults and shows that the law has done something rather unusual in the American economy this century: It has pushed back against inequality, essentially redistributing income — in the form of health insurance or insurance subsidies — to many of the groups that have fared poorly over the last few decades. The biggest winners from the law include people between the ages of 18 and 34; blacks; Hispanics; and people who live in rural areas. The areas with the largest increases in the health insurance rate, for example, include rural Arkansas and Nevada; southern Texas; large swaths of New Mexico, Kentucky and West Virginia; and much of inland California and Oregon.
Despite many Republican voters’ disdain for the Affordable Care Act, parts of the country that lean the most heavily Republican (according to 2012 presidential election results) showed significantly more insurance gains than places where voters lean strongly Democratic. That partly reflects underlying rates of insurance. In liberal places, like Massachusetts and Hawaii, previous state policies had made insurance coverage much more widespread, leaving less room for improvement. But the correlation also reflects trends in wealth and poverty. Many of the poorest and most rural states in the country tend to favor Republican politicians.
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Friday October 31 2014, @09:54AM
Show me a political party that doesn't have visible infighting, and it'll almost certainly be a fascist dictatorship with a completely totalitarian leader. Even the Communist countries of the world have/had significant differences of opinion amongst their leadership - which in some cases have been ended with purges, but that's not really the point.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Saturday November 01 2014, @12:04AM
Because the tea party will "hold their nose" and vote for somebody like Mittens, hell they'd vote for Thurston Howell The Third running on a big government ticket as long as he had an R after the name whereas the Dems just won't bother, see how lousy the turnout for midterms is among the dems.
But someone below nailed it, dems in red states are all city folk and VERY patronizing, they come off as talking down to the voters. Its not like dems can't win if they take a more centrist tone, hell look at Clinton which is loved in AR to this day or the outgoing governor Mike Bebee. But you can't bring hard left politics while talking down to the voters in red states if you ever hope to win, that shit just won't fly.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 01 2014, @12:16AM
Actually, you got it roughly wrong way round.
The Occupy movement adherents either sulked home (you got that right) or voted for a D (with a few outliers voting G or S).
The Tea Partiers actually put up their own candidates, went RINO-hunting, and rather threw away the chances of an R winning a race than voting for an R they didn't like. Witness: the number of red state D officeholders who are now desperately greasing up their buttholes in preparation for election day.
Voila, the Tea Party gets (grudging) respect in republican circles, while with a few exceptions (Warren springs to mind) the democrats carry on, confident that the livestock will line up for the slaughter in presidential years, at least.
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Saturday November 01 2014, @11:53AM
The bit about the city folk does touch on an interesting point though. The split between the two main parties isn't really a state-by-state thing, it's a rural vs. urban thing. A far better split currently would be to say that most Democrats tend live in urban areas while Republicans seem to prefer the countryside, something backed up by the purple heat maps of how people vote across the US on a county by county basis, even if that doesn't align with how the Electoral College works. Those states that have more urban voters tend to be those than swing Democract while those that are more rural tend to swing towards the Republicans, although how long it will stay that way is anyone's guess.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!