In Georgia, Lawmakers Taking Pride in Policies That Hurt the Poor

Georgia seems to be trying to catch Mississippi in the race to the bottom.

In Georgia, Lawmakers Taking Pride in Policies That Hurt the Poor

Quote :

The environment is especially hostile for Georgia’s women, 21 percent of whom live in poverty (33 and 36 percent of Black and Hispanic Georgian women, respectively). More women in Georgia die of pregnancy-related causes than women in all but two other states. The U.S. maternal mortality rate (MMR) is 18.5; that is the number of women who die for every 100,000 births. Georgia’s MMR has more than doubled since 2004 and is now 35.5 (a shocking 63.8 for black women and 24.6 for white women). Expanding Medicaid would extend health coverage to more than 500,000 uninsured Georgians, 342,000 of them women. That coverage would surely save women’s lives.

Expanding Medicaid is the right thing to do, and it makes good economic sense. It would support the development of 70,343 jobs statewide in the next decade. In that time it would bring $33 billion of new federal funding into the state, generating $1.8 billion in new state revenue. Despite all this, and despite the fact that poverty is increasing, access to health care is decreasing, and more women are dying because of pregnancy than in any time in the past 20 years, conservatives in Georgia proudly reject Medicaid expansion.

Three things unite the South. I'm not saying they're contributory, they could be coincidental, but you never know.

• Strong religion
  
• Majority Black
  
• Poor

The results of this confluence are all related to each other.

• Uneducated populace
  
• High rates of abortion
  
• High rates of unwed mothers
  
• High rates of gun ownership
  
• Resistance to bettering any of this

If *I* was elected president, I might re-open the Civil War and cede the Confederacy to independence -- whether they want it or not. I'd include a liberal immigration policy.