South Carolina Is Sick
South Carolina has dropped six spots on a key health and wellness ranking, moving from No. 42 to No. 48 in the nation.
Published by the United Health Foundation, this week’s new America’s Health Rankings paint a bleak picture not only of our state’s medical condition, but also of the factors contributing to our malaise.
Straight from the report (with a nod to our friends over at the Garnet Spy):
Challenges include a low high school graduation rate with 60.1 percent of incoming ninth graders who graduate within four years, a high violent crime rate at 788 offenses per 100,000 population, a high prevalence of obesity at 29.0 percent of the population, a high infant mortality rate at 8.6 deaths per 1,000 live births and a high premature death rate with 9,559 years of potential life lost before age 75 per 100,000 population. South Carolina ranks lower for health determinants than for health outcomes, indicating that overall healthiness may decline over time as was the case this year.
The study also found that within the last year, the number of children living in poverty in South Carolina jumped from 15.6% to 21%.
Not surprisingly, the first (and typically the only) solution offered by our state’s left-leaning “GOP” leaders is to raise taxes and increase spending, a plan which ignores the complete and total failure of that approach in the past.
South Carolina has nearly tripled its health care spending over the past two decades, and yet our state has ranked in the bottom ten states for health and wellness for seventeen straight years.
Comments
By Gillon on December 5th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Since the Governor is obviously not one of those “left-leaning GOP leaders” who advocates “raising taxes and increasing spending” to whom you refer. I would be interested in knowing what his suggestions and/or plans for dealing with this deplorable state of affairs are. After all, he, unlike the legislature, was elected by all the citizens of the state and should be accountable to all of them.
By Sean S. on December 5th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
The reason for the jump in healthcare costs mostly has to do with dealing with problems when they get to the emergency room, an aging population, and a fall in the number of people covered by their employers. It’s almost like a perfect storm of bad scenarios.
But the better question is, how exactly do you expect public health statistics to trend better without public health programs? Are you just hoping everyone wakes up tomorrow feeling healthy? Even if everyone were to become a granola eating, non-smoking, non-drinking exercise buff, we would still have significant genetic and inherited diseases to deal with, not to mention infectious diseases and cancers not caused by personal lifestyle choices.
By Smoking don't help none on December 5th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
What about using some of the money from the cigarette companies to educate our kids not to smoke? Also how about raising the taxes on smokes too ?
This is what most of the states do that are ahead of us on the list.
By BIN News Editorial Staff on December 6th, 2008 at 12:13 am
Yes, sic(k) willie. Slash all taxes. That will fix everything. Two members of the BIN News Editorial Staff wanted to close with these words calling you a “…brainless moron.” But the others out voted them. It was 5 to 2.
BIN News Editorial Staff
Always Flair and Balanced
By liz on December 6th, 2008 at 9:04 am
Ahh Fits you are tickling my funny bone here.
South Carolina is sick. We are sick and tired of being told nonsense by providers, being told no by insurers and watching our Social Security being stolen, right out from under us.
Take Lyme Disease- SCDHEC says we don’t have that here. The SC Docs rarely test for it, but testing is scewed anyway. ( See Connecticut Attorney General’s website for details.) Now DHEC wants you to believe that Bird Flu can travel to SC from Asia but Lyme can’t come down I 95.
Insurers are ruling the roost with their treatment decisions on each and every disease by establishing ” standards of care”. So now insurers insist on ” cookbook ” medicine that does NOT work. They call it evidence based, but the evidence says it doesn’t work.
Then finally, yes indeed, being the first and only disabled American to return to work with my lifetime ( and misdiagnosed for thirty plus year illness that will NEVER go away), I have evidence my surrendered SSA account was paid to someone other than me the entire eleven years I worked, plus the almost four years the Columbia SSA office made me wait to beg to get the opporuntity to restore my benefits.
I was punished for working with my lifetime illness, currently have a written threat to terminate my SSA benefits and still have not been paid the money the SSA owes me. That’s because there are two of me in their system.
Think subsidies, think Part D, think enormous fraud coming from South Carolina inside the SSA system.
That’s enough to keep the South Carolina population SICK.
You want details, I got em.