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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 31 2014, @01:11PM
And what's to say the warning isn't valid, the overall inequality of the situation aside? What if the Democrat actually does want to take some of the Republican's twinky, to redistribute it to the "didadvantaged"?
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Friday October 31 2014, @01:55PM
The only issue is that we're kicking the poor person when we should both be kicking the Republican to get him to give up one or two more of the Twinkies. And that it's not just the Republicans doing that these days. Face it - we're an oligarchy now. This will be solved within about fifty years by another revolution. I hope I'm dead before it happens. It won't be pretty.
That is all.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 31 2014, @03:00PM
And I note that when it comes to wealth redistribution, it is much easier to steal a twinky from the poor guy than it is from the rich guy. So many of these wealth redistribution schemes go horribly wrong.
Finally, it's worth noting that the world is experiencing a time of unprecedented global growth and prosperity. If your society is not sharing in that, then you should be asking why. My view is that wealth redistribution is one of the reasons why. Power shifts from those who make twinkies to those who can steal twinkies.
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Friday October 31 2014, @05:42PM
No, power shifts to those who hoard Twinkies, for eventually they shall have the only Twinkies.
Power accretes until it is dispersed. It seems as universal as a law of nature. You can choose to get rid of these accretions when they're small and tractable or you can wait until there's going to be a bunch of collateral damage when it finally gets taken down. The bigger the accretion, the bigger the explosion. And you, my friend, are sitting on a powder-keg of power accretion previously unimagined in the world, holding the match of improved access to information extremely close to the fuse of unmet needs. I wish you the best in our mutual upcoming skyward journey.
That is all.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 31 2014, @09:53PM
No, power shifts to those who hoard Twinkies, for eventually they shall have the only Twinkies.
It didn't work that way in the early part of the 20th Century in the US. What happened over the past few decades is simple. The balance of power between developed world labor and developed world capital shifted in favor of the latter. This is solely due to economic globalization and stiff competition with developing world labor. It stop when most of the world's labor gets employed and elevated to near developed world standards. I see that happening in about thirty years for the world outside of Africa.
Rather than steal "twinkies" from each other, which concentrates power in the hands of those who control the theft, the developed world should be thinking a lot harder about how to make its labor and other assets more valuable and less costly. There is no reason that the developed world shouldn't have very high employment rates.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 01 2014, @03:08AM
Twinkie@ is a registered trademark. If you make your own Twinkies, you will be arrested. That is why it is better to kick the Republican and take some of his: he has a license!!