No, we’re not talking about the flu. Nor is this a metaphor for the lingering disease of public corruption.
South Carolina is sick … literally (and chronically).
And the status quo approaches to addressing it just aren’t going to cut it anymore.
This news site has previously pointed out how the Palmetto State’s all-powerful, “Republican-controlled” S.C. General Assembly has embraced the “Mo’ Money, Mo Problems” approach to governing.
Our leaders’ addiction to taxing, borrowing and spending has produced consistently abysmal outcomes – economically, fiscally, educationally and with regards to infrastructure, public safety and other core functions of government.
Unfortunately, it’s time to add some more terrible data to that list …
According to a new report from the website Pricenomics, South Carolina is the third least healthy state in America – with 10.8 percent of life insurance applicants reporting some sort of health condition.
Take a look …
(Click to view)
(Via: PolicyGenius)
Also worth noting? A whopping 17.3 percent of life insurance applicants from the Palmetto State reported having a history of high cholesterol – the highest level in the country.
South Carolina life insurance applicants also ranked ninth nationally in tobacco usage (24.1 percent), fifth nationally in high blood pressure (20 percent) and eighth nationally in diabetes (3.6 percent).
“We looked at two years worth of anonymized data (11/2015 to 11/2017) from life insurance applicants with various providers,” analysts at Pricenomics noted. “To ensure the highest accuracy, we limited our data set to phone-verified applicants. For the national data, we used figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American Heart Association, American Diabetes Association, National Institute of Mental Health and others.”
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[/timed-content-server]Obviously this is just one set of data … and it has acknowledged limitations.
For example, the average life insurance applicant in this study “had lower percentages of ailments across the board” when compared to the population as a whole.
Which means the real numbers are much worse …
But South Carolina’s presence in the top ten of so many pernicious health categories is deeply troubling … if for no other reason than (like so many of the state’s other terrible rankings) it is the same story every year.
Stay tuned … we’re pulling some additional data as we look into various health outcomes across South Carolina. And yes, we anticipate we will wind up reporting (again) on how the only “solutions” state leaders are offering to address the Palmetto State’s historic poor health involve spending more money on the same failed approaches.
Sounds to us like it’s time to try something different.
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