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Women More Likely to Be Uninsured
The uninsured problem in Texas is worse than you thought, at least according to a new study.
There are nearly three million low-income women in Texas, and 52 percent of them lack health insurance.
That’s the stunning finding of a recent study of women’s health insurance coverage by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the California-based nonprofit that specializes in health care policy studies.The report includes a state-by-state breakdown, and the numbers for Texas aren’t pretty.
It’s no secret that many Texans lack health insurance. For years, the state has boasted the highest uninsured rate in the nation. But the Kaiser figures are especially alarming.Women in Texas are more likely than men to be uninsured. Twenty-eight percent of women in Texas lack health insurance. That's the highest rate in the country and far above the national average of 18 percent. (About a quarter of all Texans are uninsured. If 28 percent of women are uninsured, it means the rate for men must be far lower.)
For poor women, the prospects are even worse. The 52 percent of low-income Texas women without health coverage is the highest rate in the country. No other state even tops 45 percent.The Kaiser has similar reports going back 10 years. While skimming the numbers, I noticed that while the percentage of Texas women without insurance has always been high, the numbers spiked by about 5 percent after 2003. That was the year the Legislature passed a bare-bones budget that cut hundreds of thousands of Texans off Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program. Hard to know if that's the cause, but it's an interested correlation.
The bottom line is this: Uninsured women lead less health lives. They postpone getting treatment and are much less likely to received preventive care such as mammograms and Pap tests.
National health care reform might change all this. Under the plans that Congress is debating, nearly all low-income women would be covered by Medicaid. Many other women would receive government subsidies to buy insurance.In Texas, that would help millions of poor women.
Posted under: Health CareDept. of Corrections
Talk about jumping the gun.
From the Philadelphia Inquirer:A Message To Our Readers,
A Macy's advertisement in today's Inquirer incorrectly offered Phillies 2009 World Championship merchandise. The Inquirer deeply regrets this error. Macy's is a great corporate citizen, supporter of this region and our sports teams. We apologize for this error and any inconvenience this caused.This one strikes close to home for the Contrarian -- a native Philadelphian and die-hard Phillies fan who's been crying in his coffee this morning after last night's unpleasantness.
But -- being a contrarian and a die-hard -- I'm still holding out hope that the Phils can win the World Series in seven games.
And if they don't, I'll blame the ad department at Macy's for creating a jinx.
Posted under: Correcting the RecordManslaughter at a State School
More sad evidence this week that reforming the troubled Texas state school system -- the 13 large institutions for the mentally disabled -- will be a long, difficult job.
A former employee at the Lubbock State School was indicted on Tuesday on manslaughter charges. A direct care worker named Doneil Smith allegedly killed a 45 year old resident. Smith allegedly suffocated the resident to death.
The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal has more details:
The medical examiner's office ruled Nicholson died of suffocation during a struggle.
The autopsy report cited information from investigative reports which stated that Nicholson was on a mattress with someone lying over his upper torso when he died.
Lilly Nicholson told the A-J in August that several state school employees caused his death while trying to dress him.
She said her son suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder and refused to dress while his clothes were being washed.
The Department of Aging and Disability Services (DADS), the state agency that oversees state schools, has fired Smith and five other employees at the Lubbock facility, according to the paper.
As you may know, state schools have endured well-documented problems in recent years. (You can read our story on the facilities here.)
The Legislature passed several state school reform bills last session, including a 12-percent funding increase for the chronically underfunded institutions. (You can read our coverage of the reforms here.)
I should note that lawmakers did change the name of these facilities. They're not longer state schools. They're "state supported living centers."
But lawmakers ignore one major issue: They didn't increase the salaries for state school workers, who are among the lowest paid state employees.
Caring for the mentally disabled is a demanding, difficult job, and only certainl individuals are cut out for it.
But the $8-an-hour starting salary is why the Lubbock State School -- now called the Lubbock State Supported Living Center -- wound up with someone like Doneil Smith caring for a vulnerable patient with mental retardation.
It's worth noting that this incident happened in June, before the recently passed reforms took full effect.
But the incident shows it will take a lot more than a name change to fix these facilities, and without the pay increase, it's not clear that conditions will improve.
Posted under: Health CareHeath Care Reform Would Benefit Texas
Must-read column today by Michael Schnurman in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He details how and why national health care reform would benefit Texas.
For one, when it comes to health insurance, the free market isn't all that free. In many states, there are too few insurance companies to spark true competition for customers.
But here's the catch: Even in states with lots of competition (states like Texas), prices have still gone up. Schnurman writes:
Lots of competition means lots of choice and lots of benefits for consumers — at least that’s the theory.
Except that in health insurance, the results have often been higher prices and more cherry-picking of the best customers.
"We have lots of choices, but they aren’t affordable choices," said Anne Dunkelberg, associate director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, an Austin research group that supports reform. "Having a lot of competitors isn’t sufficient in itself."Free market principles just don't graft well on to certain policy areas -- such as education. Same goes for health care. It's proven nearly impossible to create a pure health insurance market. With health care, more competition doesn't necessarily reduce prices.
Schnurman also piggybacks on the excellent research by CPPP that shows how much national health care reform would benefit Texas, especially if there's a public option:
Unfortunately, a lot of people in Texas don’t get insurance from large employers or from employers at all. Just under 49 percent of Texans have employer-sponsored insurance, compared with an average of 56 percent for the nation (and 88.5 percent in Hawaii).
It’s part of this group that stands to benefit from a public option. The government plan would be added to a health insurance exchange that includes private carriers and offers several tiers of coverage. The public option would be offered to individuals, as well as employees of small companies whose plans were too expensive or limited in coverage....Like it or not, reform is coming, and Texas stands to be one of the big winners. For people looking to the health insurance exchange — and there will be a lot of them in Texas — the public option could make it even better.
Posted under: Health Care« Older Posts Newer Posts »The Supposed Willingham Confession
On Sunday, Stacy Kuykendall -- the ex-wife of Cameron Todd Willingham -- gave her first public statement in years. She provided a statement to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in which she reiterated that, when she met with Willingham on death row just before his 2004 execution, he confessed to starting the 1991 fire that killed their three daughters.
(If you don't know the details of Willingham's case, click here.)
The supposed confession is highly problematic. Kuykendall's story keeps changing. I sympathize with Kuykendall. She experienced unspeakable tragedy. But it's hard to trust what she's saying now.
If we had a recording of Willingham confessing, that would be one thing. Unfortunately, only two people know what was said that day. One of them is dead. The other keeps changing her account.
So my advice is this: ignore the whole damn episode.
The notion of a death row confession is enticing. But there are no answers here. It's a bottomless hole.
If you're truly interested in trying to figure this out, I wrote about the problems with the supposed confession here. David Grann at the New Yorker has an even more detailed breakdown.
(Grits is also on point, as is Kuffner.)
But it's a waste of time. Dwelling on the validity of the confession will drive you insane, and it will amount to nothing.
Like I said, ignore it.
Focus instead on the forensics of the case. The flawed arson evidence that convicted Willingham is the heart of the matter.
Some media outlets are blessedly turning their focus to the forensics. I mentioned yesterday an excellent story in the Star-Telegram.
The Dallas Morning News also chimes in with a clear-eyed editorial.
We shouldn't be re-trying Willingham. The case is irrevocably closed.
But many other people likely were convicted on similarly flawed arson evidence. (I've found three of them in a series of stories on faulty arson convictions). We should learn what we can about how and why Willingham was convicted on such bad evidence and then look for innocent people still in jail on bogus arson convictions.
These are the people who can still be helped.
Posted under: Science of Arson -
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Women More Likely to Be Uninsured
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Dept. of Corrections
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Manslaughter at a State School
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Heath Care Reform Would Benefit Texas
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The Supposed Willingham Confession
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As Burka Goes, So Goes the State
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