538's Nate Silver: Blue Dog Districts Need Health Care More than Most

[mod mom]

Blue Dog Districts Need Health Care More than Most

by Nate Silver @ 10:24 AM

One thing I don't understand is the equivalence, such as in this Roll Call article today, between the health care debate and the climate bill that was passed by the House a couple of weeks ago. There are 48 Congressional Districts that were won by John McCain and that currently have a Democratic Representative. Most of those districts are rural and blue-collar. On the climate change bill, this might give those Representatives ample reason to vote against the initiative: 38 of the 48 have per capita carbon output rates above the national median, and 36 of the 48 have an above-median concentration of jobs in the manufacturing and agricultural sectors. But something the opposite holds true on health care.

Throughout last year, Gallup included a module on health and well being in their standard tracking surveys. This meant they had tens of thousands of interviews between all 435 Congressional Districts. One of the questions on the well-being module was about whether or not people had health insurance. Eric Nielsen at Gallup was kind enough, a while back, to send me these results broken down by Congressional District.

The median Congressional District has an uninsured population of 14.6 percent, according to Gallup's data (the average is slightly higher at 15.5 percent). Of the 48 McCainocrat districts, 31 (roughly two-thirds) have an above-median number of uninsured. A complete list follows below (actual Blue Dogs are denoted in ... you guessed it ... blue):

-snip

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

[Captain Hilts]

1. As do Red states. The proposed solution? TAX healthcare benefits in BLUE states! Insane. nt

[kenfrequed]

2. FEh

All the more insane as it is very similar to the plan that McLame suggested. Sometimes I wonder if the Blue-dogs/DLC wouldn't have been happier with a re-pug president. It would have given them cover from being held responsible for voting properly.

"Oh don't blame me.... it was those evil republicans."