Thursday, June 27, 2013
North Carolina “Moral Monday” protests battle right-wing agenda
RALEIGH, N.C. - A multi-racial crowd of over 2,500 people rallied outside the North Carolina State Legislature Building on Monday, June 24. 120 activists were arrested in an act of civil disobedience. The focus of this eighth "Moral Monday" was women and the labor movement.
The protests have been organized by the state NAACP along with other civil rights, labor and immigration rights groups, in response to the sharp rightward shift in the state's politics that occurred in 2010. That is when, for the first time in more than 100 years, Republicans took control of both the House and the Senate. With redistricting, the Republicans increased their majority in 2012, and Republican Pat McCrory, the former mayor of Charlotte, was elected governor.
Addressing the crowd, the Rev. William J. Barber, president of the state's NAACP and leader of the Moral Monday campaign, said, "This isn't a Democratic or Republican Party thing, this is a people movement, led by workers, black, white, brown, old and young, straight, LGBT, religious, atheists, and everything in between." One of the highlights of the rally was when Rev. Barber hushed the crowd and then turned to the media and politicians being interviewed at the back of the stage. He asked them to stop, saying, "This isn't a party. This is serious and this is about the workers and people in trouble." His statement was greeted with applause and cheers.
The picture for working families in North Carolina is grim. The state has the fifth highest unemployment rate in the country. This week the General Assembly (House and Senate) voted not to extend unemployment compensation, which will cut benefits for 17,000 people.
Currently 25 percent of children live in poverty and 23 percent of women have no health insurance. Gov. McCrory has rejected the call, under the Affordable Care Act, to expand Medicaid, which means that 500,000 people will be denied access to medical care. There are bills pending to tax Social Security benefits, and the legislature has done away with union dues check off (direct deductions from workers' paychecks), weakening the state employees' and teachers' unions.
None of this is surprising given that the governor's budget director is Art Pope, a member of the John Birch Society and a founding board member of the far-right billionaire Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity. In 2010, Pope's organizations spent $2.2 million on 22 state legislature races, and won 18.
North Carolina has also announced that it will go full speed ahead to implement new restrictive voting rules in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act.
http://peoplesworld.org/north-carolina-moral-monday-protests-battle-right-wing-agenda/
Friday, May 31, 2013
This hits the nail on the head of life in the small town South
Opinion > Letter from the heartland: Silent factories, human pain
Letter from the heartland: Silent factories, human pain
by: CHARLES MILLSON
may 23 2013
tags: letters, opinion, unemployment, jobs, workers, drugs, economy
Dear friend,
After a week's vacation, I'm back now to rural Tennessee.
Forgive my sarcasm, but nothing's changed here in a week. The high unemployment, the paycheck-to-paycheck population of the area, and the increasing incidence of spousal abuse, teen pregnancy and drug use (prescription and otherwise) still dominate daily life.
We see this far too often in the clientele at the local food bank we operate in our small town.
Up until a decade ago, a mobile home manufacturer ran two large plants here. They operated 24/7, and they provided a decent living for the workers of the area.
But cutbacks and corporate greed won out over taking care of the laborers. Both plants are silent now, yet, even today, they display fading painted aluminum signs that still boast of the worker productivity over the years.
No, the workers did their parts.
It was the greed of the corporation that moved the factory elsewhere, somewhere it didn't have a union and didn't have to pay workers a decent wage.
Now, around here, as unemployment sits around 25 percent, there's nothing much to do except have babies you can't afford to feed or care for, and then do drugs to forget you can't care for your family.
Guys who've been taught by this culture that showing emotion or not taking care of your family are sure signs of weakness often take out their inability to express frustration by battering the closest thing to them - usually a "significant other" or a child.
In a decidedly Red State, you'd think the churches would step in and help.
Nope.
The middle class dresses up on Sundays and fills the pews; the poor, by and large, don't go to church. One local pastor remarked, "We'd like to help them folks, but they gotta help themselves."
He said this to me from the window of his new pickup truck as he "defended" his church's decision to not be a part of our food bank collaboration.
It seems the churches around here only help those who can put something in the collection plate every week ... and completely miss the irony.
My apologies: it's not all doom and gloom, my friend. To be fair, some local religious groups practice the Social Gospel, believing that we should imitate the book of Acts when it describes the early church members "selling what they had and sharing with the poor."
These groups believe that the early church "had all things common," as Acts says, and that we, too, should imitate that early form of socialism and follow the example of Jesus who fed the hungry, helped the sick, comforted the sorrowful.
But I'm preaching. You probably know this already.
I promise my next letter will be more upbeat.
Until then, I hope your struggle goes well.
In solidarity,
Charlie M.
http://www.peoplesworld.org/letter-from-the-heartland-silent-factories-human-pain#PageComment_153906
Monday, March 18, 2013
Monday, April 26, 2010
Animals are treated better then this
The North Carolina Wage and Hour Act (WHA) does not require mandatory rest breaks or meal breaks for employees 16 years of age or older. The WHA requires breaks only for youths under 16 years of age. Youths under 16 years of age have to be given at least a 30-minute break after 5 hours of consecutive hours and no break of less than 30 minutes shall be deemed to interrupt a continuous period of work. Again, there are no required rest breaks or meal breaks at all for employees 16 years of age or older. The North Carolina law on breaks for youths under 16 years of age generally applies only to enterprises that have gross sales or receipts of less than $500,000.00 a year and to private non-profit organizations. It is our understanding that the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) does not require that an employer give its employees mandatory rest breaks or meal breaks regardless of an employee's age.
Generally, if an employer does give breaks, then the break must be at least 30 minutes for the employer to be able to deduct the time from an employee's pay. An employer does not have to let its employees leave the employer's premises as long as the employee is completely relieved of duty during the 30-minute break, and the employer does not have to provide a breakroom. An example of an employee "completely relieved of duty" is one who is completely relieved from having to wait for customers to come in or to call. Waiting for customers to come in or to call is clearly work time even if the employee is free to eat or read a magazine while they are waiting for customers or calls. Generally, breaks of less than 30 minutes, such as a 15-minute rest break, have to be paid by the employer. You may want to review the federal rules on hours worked including rules on breaks found in Code of Federal Regulation [CFR] 785 [we have adopted this federal rule]. The rules on "Rest and Meal Periods" are found in 785.18 and 785.19. Here is the Web site to go directly to CFR 785: http://www.dol.gov/dol/allcfr/ESA/Title_29/Part_785/toc.htm
Also, there is no North Carolina law requiring an employer to give its employees a smoke-break or to provide a place for its employees to smoke. There is a North Carolina law making it illegal for an employer to discriminate against an employee for the employee's lawful use of lawful products, such as tobacco, during non-working hours (N.C.G.S. §95-28.2). However, it is entirely up to an employer to set its own rules for its employees during working hours concerning breaks and if its employees are allowed to smoke in its premises or not during the workday.
The bottom line: It is entirely up to an employer to give breaks or not to give breaks to its employees who are 16 years of age or older in North Carolina.
Generally, if an employer does give breaks, then the break must be at least 30 minutes for the employer to be able to deduct the time from an employee's pay. An employer does not have to let its employees leave the employer's premises as long as the employee is completely relieved of duty during the 30-minute break, and the employer does not have to provide a breakroom. An example of an employee "completely relieved of duty" is one who is completely relieved from having to wait for customers to come in or to call. Waiting for customers to come in or to call is clearly work time even if the employee is free to eat or read a magazine while they are waiting for customers or calls. Generally, breaks of less than 30 minutes, such as a 15-minute rest break, have to be paid by the employer. You may want to review the federal rules on hours worked including rules on breaks found in Code of Federal Regulation [CFR] 785 [we have adopted this federal rule]. The rules on "Rest and Meal Periods" are found in 785.18 and 785.19. Here is the Web site to go directly to CFR 785: http://www.dol.gov/dol/allcfr/ESA/Title_29/Part_785/toc.htm
Also, there is no North Carolina law requiring an employer to give its employees a smoke-break or to provide a place for its employees to smoke. There is a North Carolina law making it illegal for an employer to discriminate against an employee for the employee's lawful use of lawful products, such as tobacco, during non-working hours (N.C.G.S. §95-28.2). However, it is entirely up to an employer to set its own rules for its employees during working hours concerning breaks and if its employees are allowed to smoke in its premises or not during the workday.
The bottom line: It is entirely up to an employer to give breaks or not to give breaks to its employees who are 16 years of age or older in North Carolina.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
How progressives can win back the South
By Chris Kromm,Institute for Southern Studies
For most people in America, the #1 issue right now is the recession -- and as Bob Herbert argued in a New York Times op-ed this week, Obama's failure to grasp the depth of this sentiment represents his and his party's biggest Achilles heel:
The Obama administration and Democrats in general are in trouble because they are not urgently and effectively addressing the issue that most Americans want them to: the frightening economic insecurity that has put a chokehold on millions of American families [...]
Instead of focusing with unwavering intensity on this increasingly tragic situation, making it their top domestic priority, President Obama and the Democrats on Capitol Hill have spent astonishing amounts of time and energy, and most of their political capital, on an obsessive quest to pass a health care bill.
Health care reform is important. But what the public has wanted and still badly needs above all else from Mr. Obama and the Democrats are bold efforts to put people back to work.
Obama's lack of focus on jobs and the economy has certainly made his road more difficult in the South. We'll know more about how Southern states are faring when the new state-by-state jobs numbers are released. [Those numbers are now out; for an analysis click here.]
But despite some encouraging signs of new business hiring, the new stats will likely show the South is in the same situation as when Obama gave his State of the Union address in January, when eight out of 13 Southern states had unemployment rates higher than 10%, the national average.
Of course, even a laser-like focus on jobs and the economy won't completely turn around Obama's and the Democrats' popularity in the South, where a complex blend of cultural conservatism, right-wing agitation and racial animosity have driven Obama's poll ratings (at least among whites) into the ground.
But to look at it another way: If there is any one issue that could possibly revive progressive prospects in the South, focusing on the economy stands the best chance, for several reasons:
1) It taps a deep vein of economic populism in the South: In 2006, a Pew Center survey found that 47% of all people who identified as "populists" lived in the South. At the time, the questions used to measure "populism" included support for repealing Bush's tax cuts for the rich, belief that businesses make too much profit and support for a minimum wage increase.
In 2010, Southern populism might include support for a Consumer Protection Agency and investing heavily in fast job-creation strategies.
2) It plays to progressive strengths: Last week, when 19 GOP senators -- including eight from Southern states with high unemployment rates -- voted against extending jobless, progressives were given a gift.
It was a clear example of how those representing everyday Southerners don't speak for their interests -- not in some abstract way, but on a concrete issue of concern to their families: receiving relief they need in this tough economy to put food on the table and provide for their families.
But progressives can only win on these kind of issues if they are consistent. It won't work to be silent about protecting consumers from credit industry greed one moment and then claim to champion debt-struggling families the next.
3) It speaks to the lessons of history: History rarely repeats itself, and trying to draw neat lessons from the past is a tricky and dangerous exercise. But one of the most interesting chapters in Southern history is the way Roosevelt -- widely decried in the media as a fierce liberal, however cautious he was in practice -- was able to win over Southerners to New Deal politics.
How did he do it? By an almost myopic focus on the economy (often, critics point out, to the exclusion of issues like civil rights).
Reformers inside the New Deal pushed to ensure industrial and agricultural relief programs benefit a broad swath of Southerners. Projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority, hatched in 1933, were guided by a broad social mission of social uplift for struggling Appalachian communities.
FDR had to be pushed from the outside, sometimes hard, as the insurgencies of textile workers in the famous Uprising of '34 and the multi-racial Southern Tenant Farmers Union proved. But Roosevelt came to see how a progressive economic agenda could change the South. By 1938, FDR's advisers were releasing a major report on economic conditions in the South to help rally political support for the New Deal agenda in the region.
Obama and the Democrats have no silver bullet for winning over white Southerners. But there's a sure-fire way they can make the situation worse: ignoring the South's history of economic populism and the very real economic pain millions of Southerners face today.
For most people in America, the #1 issue right now is the recession -- and as Bob Herbert argued in a New York Times op-ed this week, Obama's failure to grasp the depth of this sentiment represents his and his party's biggest Achilles heel:
The Obama administration and Democrats in general are in trouble because they are not urgently and effectively addressing the issue that most Americans want them to: the frightening economic insecurity that has put a chokehold on millions of American families [...]
Instead of focusing with unwavering intensity on this increasingly tragic situation, making it their top domestic priority, President Obama and the Democrats on Capitol Hill have spent astonishing amounts of time and energy, and most of their political capital, on an obsessive quest to pass a health care bill.
Health care reform is important. But what the public has wanted and still badly needs above all else from Mr. Obama and the Democrats are bold efforts to put people back to work.
Obama's lack of focus on jobs and the economy has certainly made his road more difficult in the South. We'll know more about how Southern states are faring when the new state-by-state jobs numbers are released. [Those numbers are now out; for an analysis click here.]
But despite some encouraging signs of new business hiring, the new stats will likely show the South is in the same situation as when Obama gave his State of the Union address in January, when eight out of 13 Southern states had unemployment rates higher than 10%, the national average.
Of course, even a laser-like focus on jobs and the economy won't completely turn around Obama's and the Democrats' popularity in the South, where a complex blend of cultural conservatism, right-wing agitation and racial animosity have driven Obama's poll ratings (at least among whites) into the ground.
But to look at it another way: If there is any one issue that could possibly revive progressive prospects in the South, focusing on the economy stands the best chance, for several reasons:
1) It taps a deep vein of economic populism in the South: In 2006, a Pew Center survey found that 47% of all people who identified as "populists" lived in the South. At the time, the questions used to measure "populism" included support for repealing Bush's tax cuts for the rich, belief that businesses make too much profit and support for a minimum wage increase.
In 2010, Southern populism might include support for a Consumer Protection Agency and investing heavily in fast job-creation strategies.
2) It plays to progressive strengths: Last week, when 19 GOP senators -- including eight from Southern states with high unemployment rates -- voted against extending jobless, progressives were given a gift.
It was a clear example of how those representing everyday Southerners don't speak for their interests -- not in some abstract way, but on a concrete issue of concern to their families: receiving relief they need in this tough economy to put food on the table and provide for their families.
But progressives can only win on these kind of issues if they are consistent. It won't work to be silent about protecting consumers from credit industry greed one moment and then claim to champion debt-struggling families the next.
3) It speaks to the lessons of history: History rarely repeats itself, and trying to draw neat lessons from the past is a tricky and dangerous exercise. But one of the most interesting chapters in Southern history is the way Roosevelt -- widely decried in the media as a fierce liberal, however cautious he was in practice -- was able to win over Southerners to New Deal politics.
How did he do it? By an almost myopic focus on the economy (often, critics point out, to the exclusion of issues like civil rights).
Reformers inside the New Deal pushed to ensure industrial and agricultural relief programs benefit a broad swath of Southerners. Projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority, hatched in 1933, were guided by a broad social mission of social uplift for struggling Appalachian communities.
FDR had to be pushed from the outside, sometimes hard, as the insurgencies of textile workers in the famous Uprising of '34 and the multi-racial Southern Tenant Farmers Union proved. But Roosevelt came to see how a progressive economic agenda could change the South. By 1938, FDR's advisers were releasing a major report on economic conditions in the South to help rally political support for the New Deal agenda in the region.
Obama and the Democrats have no silver bullet for winning over white Southerners. But there's a sure-fire way they can make the situation worse: ignoring the South's history of economic populism and the very real economic pain millions of Southerners face today.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Thirty years ago Haiti imported no rice
Today Haiti imports nearly all its rice. Though Haiti was the sugar growing capital of the Caribbean, it now imports sugar as well. Why? The US and the US dominated world financial institutions - the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank - forced Haiti to open its markets to the world. Then the US dumped millions of tons of US subsidized rice and sugar into Haiti - undercutting their farmers and ruining Haitian agriculture. By ruining Haitian agriculture, the US has forced Haiti into becoming the third largest world market for US rice. Good for US farmers, bad for Haiti.
In 2002, the US stopped hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to Haiti which were to be used for, among other public projects like education, roads. These are the same roads which relief teams are having so much trouble navigating now!
In 2004, the US again destroyed democracy in Haiti when they supported the coup against Haiti's elected President Aristide.
Haiti is even used for sexual recreation just like the old time plantations. Check the news carefully and you will find numerous stories of abuse of minors by missionaries, soldiers and charity workers. Plus there are the frequent sexual vacations taken to Haiti by people from the US and elsewhere. What is owed for that? What value would you put on it if it was your sisters and brothers?
US based corporations have for years been teaming up with Haitian elite to run sweatshops teeming with tens of thousands of Haitians who earn less than $2 a day.
The Haitian people have resisted the economic and military power of the US and others ever since their independence. Like all of us, Haitians made their own mistakes as well. But US power has forced Haitians to pay great prices - deaths, debt and abuse.
It is time for the people of the US to join with Haitians and reverse the course of US-Haitian relations.
In 2002, the US stopped hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to Haiti which were to be used for, among other public projects like education, roads. These are the same roads which relief teams are having so much trouble navigating now!
In 2004, the US again destroyed democracy in Haiti when they supported the coup against Haiti's elected President Aristide.
Haiti is even used for sexual recreation just like the old time plantations. Check the news carefully and you will find numerous stories of abuse of minors by missionaries, soldiers and charity workers. Plus there are the frequent sexual vacations taken to Haiti by people from the US and elsewhere. What is owed for that? What value would you put on it if it was your sisters and brothers?
US based corporations have for years been teaming up with Haitian elite to run sweatshops teeming with tens of thousands of Haitians who earn less than $2 a day.
The Haitian people have resisted the economic and military power of the US and others ever since their independence. Like all of us, Haitians made their own mistakes as well. But US power has forced Haitians to pay great prices - deaths, debt and abuse.
It is time for the people of the US to join with Haitians and reverse the course of US-Haitian relations.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Matters of life, death and health care in the rural South
In late July, in the heart of Appalachia, thousands crowded onto a southwest Virginia fairground for the annual Wise County free medical clinic led by Remote Area Medical, a volunteer medical relief corps based out of Tennessee. During the clinic's three days of operations, more than 14,000 rural Southern families, most with little or no insurance, spent hours in line to receive free health care from hundreds of professional doctors, nurses, dentists, and other health care workers.
It was a reminder for many that health care reform is not only vital to impoverished urban areas, but it is a crucial matter in much of rural America. Rural America in many ways has become a silent observer to the health care battle taking place in Washington, often left out of the debate and painted with a brush that reads "anti-reform." But there's another story to rural America that often goes untold -- one of poor rural populations struggling to survive with little or no health insurance and being ignored by their elected leaders. It's a story important here in the South, a region that is largely rural and poor.
As Facing South noted before, lost in much of the health care reform debate is what reform would mean to rural communities. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture [pdf], rural areas have been hit hardest by the nation's broken health insurance system:
Individuals living in rural areas are more likely to be uninsured than those in urban areas (24 percent versus 18 percent), although they are 50 percent more likely to have Medicaid coverage. Two-thirds of the uninsured are low- income families, and 30 percent are children. Even those lower income individuals who are working often lack health insurance due to the structure of employment in rural areas--specifically, smaller employers, lower wages, and greater prevalence of self-employment.
The Nebraska-based Center for Rural Affairs and the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Community Change recently released a report entitled, "Sweet the Bitter Drought: Why Rural America Needs Health Care Reform," which details the importance of health care reform to rural people and rural communities.
Rural Americans are more likely to be uninsured or underinsured than their urban counterparts, according to the report. The authors of the report highlight that the more than 60 million people who live in rural America have the most to gain from fundamental health care reform. According to the report, rural communities, many of them in the South, have been let down by the private insurance industry. These are the same rural communities that face higher rates of chronic disease, poor nutrition and deaths from injuries than any other region in the country, making access to affordable health insurance a life-saving necessity.
From the report:
...the health care reform debate has suffered greatly from a false dichotomy that ailing urban poor folks are the main beneficiaries of reform, while the hardy rural middle class is healthy and well-served by the current system. The truth is that rural people and rural communities are faced with many of the same health care challenges confronting the rest of the nation--exploding heath care costs, large numbers of uninsured and underinsured, and an overextended health care infrastructure.
...
Rural Americans are more likely to be underinsured, less likely to have choices in private insurance coverage, and in dire need of the medical services and technology that public health care investment has brought to big cities. The majority of rural Americans are suffering silently in our broken health care system and want change now.
James from Union City, Tennessee, put it best: "We're not screaming, we're pleading."
The report identifies several health care issues that make health care reform a critical one for rural communities. Rural communities have: an aging, sicker, more at-risk population with less access to preventive health care; a lack of health and wellness resources and centers; a highly-stressed health care delivery system; higher rates of chronic illness (arthritis, asthma, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and mental disorders); a shortage of practicing physicians, dentists, pharmacists, registered nurses, and emergency medical personnel; and riskier professions (farming and industry).
As the report notes, issues of uninsurance and underinsurance are also more prominent in rural areas:
Since the late 1990s, rural areas have witnessed a significant decline in manufacturing jobs and a rise in service sector employment, losing jobs with higher rates of employer-sponsored health insurance while gaining jobs with much lower rates of such coverage. The lack of employer-sponsored health insurance is particularly acute for low-skilled jobs, which are more common in rural areas.
If they do have coverage, rural populations often pay higher costs for less coverage since rural economies are also heavily based on self-employment and small business, two groups greatly impacted by the rising cost of health care premiums. Almost half of all jobs in rural communities are tied to small businesses, a rate 13 percent higher than in cities and suburbs. Workers at small businesses are twice as likely to be uninsured as other workers. As the report notes: rural people are generally less insured, more underinsured, and more dependent on the high-cost individual insurance market.
Poverty and Health Care
A majority of the country's poorest states are located in the South, and most of the poverty in the South is located in rural areas. In this sense, it is no surprise that states with substantial rural populations have ranked highest when it comes to the percentage of people living in poverty: Mississippi, Louisiana, West Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas,Texas, South Carolina, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia. Most of these states have also ranked highest when it comes to the least insured. As Facing South reported, when divided by region, the greatest populations of uninsured in the United States are mostly likely to be found in the South (18.2 percent).
Researchers continue to link higher mortality rates to lack of insurance. As Facing South reported, having no health insurance means an early death to almost 45,000 people in the United States annually, according to the American Journal of Public Health. Studies also link a lack of insurance to greater health risks, such as hypertension, poor management of chronic illness, and reduced likelihood of receiving preventative and primary care -- all issues disproportionately impacting rural populations in the South.
Studies show that rural populations in the South are dying at higher rates than urban populations. Death rates in rural areas are not declining as fast as in non-rural parts of the country, and death rates in the South are also not declining as fast as other regions of the country. The Daily Yonder recently analyzed data from the Economic Research Service and found that the gap between the death rates in rural and urban America has been increasing since 1990.
According to the ERS data, the highest mortality rates are in the rural South, including the Mississippi River Delta, the Black Belt of the southern coastal plain from Virginia through Alabama, and Appalachia (see chart below).
Community groups continue to push for better state and federal policy to tackle these high mortality rates. According to advocates, part of that policy must include support for comprehensive health care reform.
The Politics of Health Care
Yet, when it comes to policy change, rural areas are caught in a particular hard net. Many of these areas are represented in Congress by members who have been most resistant to the Obama administration's push for health care reform and a government-run public option. These politicians -- including Republicans and "Blue Dog" Democrats -- represent districts with the largest percentage of people who don't have health insurance.
A new report by the Urban Institute analyzing uninsurance across congressional districts in the United States illustrates this point. The report finds that rates of private coverage are lowest in districts that have higher poverty rates, which tend to be concentrated in the South and West. The report notes that uninsurance remains most serious in districts with low rates of private coverage.
The report shows that the states and districts that would benefit the most from the passage of health reform are in rural areas and the South (see chart below). Simply put, some of the biggest opponents of health reform in Congress come from districts -- such as ones in Texas and Florida -- with the highest rates of uninsured residents.
As NPR similarly reported in an analysis of the uninsured rates by Congressional district:
Of the 100 congressional districts with the highest percentage rates of uninsured people, 53 are represented either by Republican lawmakers who are fighting the overhaul, or by conservative Blue Dog Democrats who have slowed down and diluted the overhaul proposals.
One leader of the Blue Dog effort is Rep. Mike Ross of Arkansas, the coalition's chief health care negotiator. His 4th Congressional District covers southern Arkansas, a rural area with a high poverty rate. In his district, more than one out of five residents under age 65 lacks health insurance. That's 30 percent higher than the national average.
As Facing South reported, Ross claims his opposition to health reform efforts is because "an overwhelming number" of his constituents don't want it. This is a sentiment echoed by other conservative politicians from rural states and districts who claim that rural voters oppose health care reform. But studies continue to show that rural areas have the highest proportion of both uninsured and underinsured, and would benefit the most from comprehensive health care reform that includes a public option.
Related to the politician problem is the fact that rural areas face the heaviest consolidation by the health insurance industry -- meaning there's no competitive market for health insurance in these areas. As Facing South covered, due to unprecedented consolidation of the health insurance market over the past decade, the industry has created near-monopolies in all Southern states, driving up the cost of insurance. These concentrated health insurance markets dominate in predominantly poor rural states like Alabama and Arkansas, whose two largest health insurance companies have a combined market greater than 80 percent in each state.
Politicians like Ross represent states most in need of a public insurance choice to compete with private plans. Lack of competition means rural Southern populations face unaffordable, higher premiums. It also means people are locked out of health care because there are no alternative providers for people who may get turned down for pre-existing conditions (and as we noted above, populations in the rural South have large rates of pre-existing and chronic illnesses).
As NPR reported, a public options would give the uninsured a low-priced alternative to the private companies, and shake up the near-monopolies that insurance companies enjoy in places like rural Arkansas.
Rural health care advocates agree, underscoring that not only is a public option needed to increase competition, it's needed to save lives. "Rural people have much to gain from inclusion of a public health insurance plan option in health care reform legislation, possibly more than any other group in the nation," said Jon Bailey, Director of the Center for Rural Affairs.
As the debate heats up in D.C., more than ever before health care advocates are arguing that health care reform is critical to swaths of the rural impoverished South: from the mountains of Appalachia to the Bible Belt, from the Rio Grande Valley in Texas to the Gulf Coast.
Source :Institute for Southern Studies http://www.southernstudies.org/iss/
It was a reminder for many that health care reform is not only vital to impoverished urban areas, but it is a crucial matter in much of rural America. Rural America in many ways has become a silent observer to the health care battle taking place in Washington, often left out of the debate and painted with a brush that reads "anti-reform." But there's another story to rural America that often goes untold -- one of poor rural populations struggling to survive with little or no health insurance and being ignored by their elected leaders. It's a story important here in the South, a region that is largely rural and poor.
As Facing South noted before, lost in much of the health care reform debate is what reform would mean to rural communities. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture [pdf], rural areas have been hit hardest by the nation's broken health insurance system:
Individuals living in rural areas are more likely to be uninsured than those in urban areas (24 percent versus 18 percent), although they are 50 percent more likely to have Medicaid coverage. Two-thirds of the uninsured are low- income families, and 30 percent are children. Even those lower income individuals who are working often lack health insurance due to the structure of employment in rural areas--specifically, smaller employers, lower wages, and greater prevalence of self-employment.
The Nebraska-based Center for Rural Affairs and the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Community Change recently released a report entitled, "Sweet the Bitter Drought: Why Rural America Needs Health Care Reform," which details the importance of health care reform to rural people and rural communities.
Rural Americans are more likely to be uninsured or underinsured than their urban counterparts, according to the report. The authors of the report highlight that the more than 60 million people who live in rural America have the most to gain from fundamental health care reform. According to the report, rural communities, many of them in the South, have been let down by the private insurance industry. These are the same rural communities that face higher rates of chronic disease, poor nutrition and deaths from injuries than any other region in the country, making access to affordable health insurance a life-saving necessity.
From the report:
...the health care reform debate has suffered greatly from a false dichotomy that ailing urban poor folks are the main beneficiaries of reform, while the hardy rural middle class is healthy and well-served by the current system. The truth is that rural people and rural communities are faced with many of the same health care challenges confronting the rest of the nation--exploding heath care costs, large numbers of uninsured and underinsured, and an overextended health care infrastructure.
...
Rural Americans are more likely to be underinsured, less likely to have choices in private insurance coverage, and in dire need of the medical services and technology that public health care investment has brought to big cities. The majority of rural Americans are suffering silently in our broken health care system and want change now.
James from Union City, Tennessee, put it best: "We're not screaming, we're pleading."
The report identifies several health care issues that make health care reform a critical one for rural communities. Rural communities have: an aging, sicker, more at-risk population with less access to preventive health care; a lack of health and wellness resources and centers; a highly-stressed health care delivery system; higher rates of chronic illness (arthritis, asthma, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and mental disorders); a shortage of practicing physicians, dentists, pharmacists, registered nurses, and emergency medical personnel; and riskier professions (farming and industry).
As the report notes, issues of uninsurance and underinsurance are also more prominent in rural areas:
Since the late 1990s, rural areas have witnessed a significant decline in manufacturing jobs and a rise in service sector employment, losing jobs with higher rates of employer-sponsored health insurance while gaining jobs with much lower rates of such coverage. The lack of employer-sponsored health insurance is particularly acute for low-skilled jobs, which are more common in rural areas.
If they do have coverage, rural populations often pay higher costs for less coverage since rural economies are also heavily based on self-employment and small business, two groups greatly impacted by the rising cost of health care premiums. Almost half of all jobs in rural communities are tied to small businesses, a rate 13 percent higher than in cities and suburbs. Workers at small businesses are twice as likely to be uninsured as other workers. As the report notes: rural people are generally less insured, more underinsured, and more dependent on the high-cost individual insurance market.
Poverty and Health Care
A majority of the country's poorest states are located in the South, and most of the poverty in the South is located in rural areas. In this sense, it is no surprise that states with substantial rural populations have ranked highest when it comes to the percentage of people living in poverty: Mississippi, Louisiana, West Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas,Texas, South Carolina, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia. Most of these states have also ranked highest when it comes to the least insured. As Facing South reported, when divided by region, the greatest populations of uninsured in the United States are mostly likely to be found in the South (18.2 percent).
Researchers continue to link higher mortality rates to lack of insurance. As Facing South reported, having no health insurance means an early death to almost 45,000 people in the United States annually, according to the American Journal of Public Health. Studies also link a lack of insurance to greater health risks, such as hypertension, poor management of chronic illness, and reduced likelihood of receiving preventative and primary care -- all issues disproportionately impacting rural populations in the South.
Studies show that rural populations in the South are dying at higher rates than urban populations. Death rates in rural areas are not declining as fast as in non-rural parts of the country, and death rates in the South are also not declining as fast as other regions of the country. The Daily Yonder recently analyzed data from the Economic Research Service and found that the gap between the death rates in rural and urban America has been increasing since 1990.
According to the ERS data, the highest mortality rates are in the rural South, including the Mississippi River Delta, the Black Belt of the southern coastal plain from Virginia through Alabama, and Appalachia (see chart below).
Community groups continue to push for better state and federal policy to tackle these high mortality rates. According to advocates, part of that policy must include support for comprehensive health care reform.
The Politics of Health Care
Yet, when it comes to policy change, rural areas are caught in a particular hard net. Many of these areas are represented in Congress by members who have been most resistant to the Obama administration's push for health care reform and a government-run public option. These politicians -- including Republicans and "Blue Dog" Democrats -- represent districts with the largest percentage of people who don't have health insurance.
A new report by the Urban Institute analyzing uninsurance across congressional districts in the United States illustrates this point. The report finds that rates of private coverage are lowest in districts that have higher poverty rates, which tend to be concentrated in the South and West. The report notes that uninsurance remains most serious in districts with low rates of private coverage.
The report shows that the states and districts that would benefit the most from the passage of health reform are in rural areas and the South (see chart below). Simply put, some of the biggest opponents of health reform in Congress come from districts -- such as ones in Texas and Florida -- with the highest rates of uninsured residents.
As NPR similarly reported in an analysis of the uninsured rates by Congressional district:
Of the 100 congressional districts with the highest percentage rates of uninsured people, 53 are represented either by Republican lawmakers who are fighting the overhaul, or by conservative Blue Dog Democrats who have slowed down and diluted the overhaul proposals.
One leader of the Blue Dog effort is Rep. Mike Ross of Arkansas, the coalition's chief health care negotiator. His 4th Congressional District covers southern Arkansas, a rural area with a high poverty rate. In his district, more than one out of five residents under age 65 lacks health insurance. That's 30 percent higher than the national average.
As Facing South reported, Ross claims his opposition to health reform efforts is because "an overwhelming number" of his constituents don't want it. This is a sentiment echoed by other conservative politicians from rural states and districts who claim that rural voters oppose health care reform. But studies continue to show that rural areas have the highest proportion of both uninsured and underinsured, and would benefit the most from comprehensive health care reform that includes a public option.
Related to the politician problem is the fact that rural areas face the heaviest consolidation by the health insurance industry -- meaning there's no competitive market for health insurance in these areas. As Facing South covered, due to unprecedented consolidation of the health insurance market over the past decade, the industry has created near-monopolies in all Southern states, driving up the cost of insurance. These concentrated health insurance markets dominate in predominantly poor rural states like Alabama and Arkansas, whose two largest health insurance companies have a combined market greater than 80 percent in each state.
Politicians like Ross represent states most in need of a public insurance choice to compete with private plans. Lack of competition means rural Southern populations face unaffordable, higher premiums. It also means people are locked out of health care because there are no alternative providers for people who may get turned down for pre-existing conditions (and as we noted above, populations in the rural South have large rates of pre-existing and chronic illnesses).
As NPR reported, a public options would give the uninsured a low-priced alternative to the private companies, and shake up the near-monopolies that insurance companies enjoy in places like rural Arkansas.
Rural health care advocates agree, underscoring that not only is a public option needed to increase competition, it's needed to save lives. "Rural people have much to gain from inclusion of a public health insurance plan option in health care reform legislation, possibly more than any other group in the nation," said Jon Bailey, Director of the Center for Rural Affairs.
As the debate heats up in D.C., more than ever before health care advocates are arguing that health care reform is critical to swaths of the rural impoverished South: from the mountains of Appalachia to the Bible Belt, from the Rio Grande Valley in Texas to the Gulf Coast.
Source :Institute for Southern Studies http://www.southernstudies.org/iss/
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