Strange But True

When right-wing politicians decide that the best way to cope with budget shortfalls is by cutting Medicaid the result is that infant mortality is back on the rise in the American South. As everyone knows, despite the United States being richer than almost every country, and despite our American proclivity for spending more on health care than any other country, we have a very high infant mortality rate. In the South, naturally, it tends to be higher than the national average thanks to higher-than-usual poverty rates and worse-than-usual social services and it's getting worse as Bush and the GOP have taken the Dixie social model nationwide for several years now.