Alabama COVID-19 Findings

Recently, I examined the Alabama Department of Public Health‘s (ADPH) COVID-19 dashboard, and made some interesting findings.

As usual with many reporting outlets, whether official, governmental, or news, there are often important underlying figures omitted, either through carelessness, or willfulness, which give understanding to the greater picture. In this instance, state population, and population percentages were missing.

According to the latest figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, as of July 1, 2019, Alabama has an estimated population of 4,903,185, and the Black or African American percentage of that population is 26.8%. Thus, when observing item numbers 1, 6, and 9 citing the percentage of Alabamians tested, and distribution of the disease as being “practically equally affected,” the reality is that because of their minority population status, the Black or African American community is affected more significantly, and disproportionately affected with respect for the total population.

As well, residents aged >65+ constitute 16.9% of the population.

Alabama has a total of 15,330 staffed beds, in 89 hospitals statewide.

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1.) Only 3.789% (almost 4%) of all Alabamians have been tested for COVID-19.

2.) Of the 551 related deaths in the state, 34.2448% were hospitalized.

3.) The majority of COVID-19 cases (39.75%, or very nearly 40%), were aged 25-49 – the “prime” of life.

4.) Those aged 65, or over, constituted only 23.67% (almost 24%) of all cases.

5.) Overall, more females than males

UNC Chapel Hill Research: Medicaid Expansion Helps Rural Hospitals

As of the date of this posting – Monday, 19 September 2016 – there are 19 states which have NOT Expanded Medicaid, and Alabama is one of those 19.

In alphabetical order, they are:

Current Condition of Medicaid Expansion
Has YOUR state expanded Medicaid?
Orange=NO

1.) Alabama
2.) Florida
3.) Georgia
4.) Idaho
5.) Kansas
6.) Maine
7.) Mississippi
8.) Missouri
9.) Nebraska
10.) North Carolina
11.) Oklahoma
12.) South Carolina
13.) South Dakota
14.) Tennessee
15.) Texas
16.) Utah
17.) Virginia
18.) Wisconsin
19.) Wyoming

 

 

 

 

 

Lack Of Medicaid Expansion Hurts Rural Hospitals More Than Urban Facilities

By Shefali Luthra September 7, 2016

It isn’t news that in rural parts of the country, people have a harder time accessing good health care. But new evidence suggests opposition to a key part of the 2010 health overhaul could be adding to the gap.

The finding comes from a study published Wednesday in the journal Health Affairs, which analyzes how the states’ decisions on implementing the federal health law’s expansion of Medicaid, a federal-state insurance program for low-income people, may be influencing rural hospitals’ financial stability. Nineteen states opted not to join the expansion.

Rural hospitals have long argued they were hurt by the lack of Medicaid expansion, which leaves many of their patients without insurance coverage and strains the hospitals’ ability to better serve the public. The study suggests they have a point.

Specifically, the researchers, from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, found that

Why #ALpolitics Should’ve Elected @RonSparks2010 – @GovernorBentley In His Own Words: “I had no clue.”

Having made no bones about it, I remain searingly and scathingly critical of Alabama Governor Robert Julian Bentley, a retired physician-turned-Republican legislator from Tuscaloosa, who is twice elected governor – in 2010, and in 2014.

While I wished him well after his initial victory in the governor’s race against his Democratic opponent then-Secretary of Agriculture and Industries, Ron Sparks, he has disappointed the state since Inauguration Day 2011 when he put his foot in his mouth at Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, Montgomery, where on Martin Luther King Day, Monday, January 17, 2011 – mere hours after taking the oath of office and inauguration – he said in part, “There may be some people here today who do not have living within them the Holy Spirit. But if you have been adopted in God’s family like I have, and like you have if you’re a Christian and if you’re saved, and the Holy Spirit lives within you just like the Holy Spirit lives within me, then you know what that makes? It makes you and me brothers. And it makes you and me brother and sister. Now I will have to say that, if we don’t have the same daddy, we’re not brothers and sisters. So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister, and I want to be your brother.”

It was at that point that Rebekah Caldwell Mason became his Communication Director, and later, Senior Political Advisor-cum-paramour.

More to the point, however, I have maintained that among other things, as an elected official, he has been feckless, and clueless.

But, let’s let him speak for himself.

Here’s in part what Governor Bentley said in a speech to a statewide gathering of city officials in Montgomery, May 2013, “You know where I came up with that idea? Ron Sparks.

Remarks by President Barack Obama at Chattanooga, Tennessee’s Amazon Distribution Center on Jobs for the Middle Class, 07/30/13

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

July 30, 2013

Remarks by the President on Jobs for the Middle Class, 07/30/13

Amazon Chattanooga Fulfillment Center
Chattanooga, Tennessee

2:00 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Hello, Chattanooga!  (Applause.)  It is good to be back in Tennessee.  (Applause.)  It’s great to be here at Amazon.  (Applause.)

I want to thank Lydia for the introduction and sharing her story.  Give Lydia a big round of applause.  (Applause.)  So this is something here.  I just finished getting a tour of just one little corner of this massive facility — size of 28 football fields.  Last year, during the busiest day of the Christmas rush, customers around the world ordered more than 300 items from Amazon every second, and a lot of those traveled through this building.  So this is kind of like the North Pole of the south right here.  (Applause.)  Got a bunch of good-looking elves here.

Before we start, I want to recognize your general manager, Mike Thomas.  (Applause.)  My tour guide and your vice president, Dave Clark.  (Applause.)  You’ve got the Mayor of Chattanooga, Andy Berke.  (Applause.)  And you’ve got one of the finest gentlemen I know, your Congressman, Jim Cooper.  (Applause.)  So thank you all for being here.

So I’ve come here today to talk a little more about something I was discussing last week, and that’s what we need to do as a country to secure a better bargain for the middle class -– a national strategy to make sure that every single person who’s willing to work hard in this country has a chance to succeed in the 21st century economy.  (Applause.)

Now, you heard from Lydia, so you know — because many of you went through it — over the past four and a half years, we’ve been fighting our way back from the worst recession since the Great Depression, and it cost millions of Americans their jobs and their homes and their savings.  And part of what it did is it laid bare the long-term erosion that’s been happening when it comes to middle-class security.

But because the American people are resilient, we bounced back.  Together, we’ve righted the ship.  We took on a broken health care system.  We invested in new American technologies to reverse our addiction to foreign oil.  Changed a tax code that had become tilted too much in favor of the wealthy at the expense of working families.  Saved the auto industry, and thanks to GM and the UAW working together, we’re bringing jobs back here to America, including 1,800 autoworkers in Spring Hill.  (Applause.)  1,800 workers in Spring Hill are on the job today where a plant was once closed.

Today, our businesses have created 7.2 million new jobs over the last 40 months.  This year, we’re off to our best private-sector jobs growth since 1999.  We now sell more products made in America to the rest of the world than ever before.  (Applause.)  We produce more renewable energy than ever.  We produce more natural gas than anybody else in the world.  (Applause.)  Health care costs are growing at the slowest rate in 50 years.  Our deficits are falling at the fastest rate in 60 years.  (Applause.)

So thanks to hardworking folks like you, thanks to the grit and resilience of the American people, we’ve been able to clear away some of the rubble from the financial crisis.  We’ve started to lay a new foundation for a stronger, more durable America — the kind of economic growth that’s broad-based, the foundation required to make this century another American century.

But as I said last week, and as any middle-class family will tell you, we’re not there yet.  Even before the financial crisis hit, we were going through a decade where a few at the top were doing better and better, but most families were working harder and harder just to get by.  And reversing that trend should be Washington’s highest priority.  (Applause.)  It’s my highest priority.

But so far, for most of this year, we’ve seen

“Will that be cash, or charge?”: Many hospitals & doctors offer cash discount for care

Regular readers will recall the entry entitled “Q: Why do hospitals charge $75 for aspirin? A: Because they can.,” which was posted Wednesday, May 2, 2012.

In another venue, I had posted the following remark in response to the exorbitant healthcare costs, “It’s a simple concept, really. Anytime anyone gets in between you & who you’re buying from, it costs more. Insurance does that.”

And it’s true.

It’s not trite.

Let’s consider this example: You’re at the grocery store in the check-out line, about to pay for your groceries which have already been bagged and placed in your shopping cart. When the clerk announces the total, you have some strange feeling because the total is about ten times as much as you imagined.

When you double check the price of milk you find the sticker says $2.50/gallon, but your clerk rang up $25. You double check the price of frozen spinach. The sticker price says $1.37, but the clerk rang up $13.70. The chocolate was $4.50, but the clerk rang up $45.00. And the lean ground beef, instead of the posted $2.60/lb, the 5lb chub was… $130.00.

Talk about sticker shock!

You are aghast at the price, and in frustrated terms exclaim that “there is obviously some gross mistake!” – to which the clerk replies, “Let me check with your Food Insurance Agent,” picks up a phone beside the register, presses one button, and whispers into the receiver. 

Suddenly, out of a door leading to an inside office,

WWJD Health Care: “Will this make your life better?”

I regularly contribute commentary to a blog entitled “OFFAir & ONLine,” by Tim Lennox. Mr. Lennox is a Viet Nam veteran and print/broadcast journalist of some years’ experience, and readers will see a link to his blog on this blog. His name or face maybe most recognizable from his 11-year tenure as News Anchor/Host of Alabama’s only statewide news program “For The Record,” broadcast on Alabama Public Television (APTV).

After APTV essentially deep-sixed the award-winning program, and its highly respected Host – calling long distance to bear bad news while he was attending a relative’s funeral almost half-way across the country – Mr. Lennox has quite fortunately again found gainful employment in his field.

Recently, Mr. Lennox cited a news item and posed a question to his readers, which was a reiteration of the same question asked by the subject of a news story to which he linked, and which was, “Will this make your life better?”

It’s said that there are two motivations for people: 1.) Love, and; 2.) Money.

If a person doesn’t do a thing for love, they then do it for money. And there is a word used to describe those whom do things exclusively for money: it’s called “prostitution.”

In that light, I composed the following response:

Fear mongering certainly seems to be Republicans’ political stock in trade.

I write that after reading the inane comments of Republican Nebraska Sen. Mike Johanns in the linked story.

Concerning “government delivered healthcare,” the only comment I have, is that it certainly seems to work quite well for our Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen!

But this issue is NOT about government delivery.

It IS however, about deciding whether our nation can and should continue on the path we’ve been embarked upon for nearly three generations (post WWII era).

That being, whether we shall continue to allow for-profit, Wall Street mega-billionaires and their über-wealthy insurance companies to call the shots on our healthcare by the power of their purse.

They have made their fortunes upon the backs of the suffering, and in the process, because of lack of regulation, caused and increased unnecessary suffering among untold Americans’ lives.

Among other unconscionable and inhumane acts, they have refused to pay for procedures, medications and treatments that healthcare professionals have deemed necessary.

They have refused to pay for treatments after services were rendered after they cashed checks, claiming a “cap” or “incorrect date” was on the check. They’ve constantly changed the “rules of THEIR game,” even in the middle of the “game,” forcing the insured to dance to the tune of THEIR piper… like it or NOT! (Yeah, it’s a mixed metaphor… but it works!)

And these are but two egregious examples. There are countless, and untold MILLIONS more.

One significant reason why healthcare costs in this nation are so out-of-control are because of insurance companies.

It’s a very simple-to-understand idea: 

Anytime anyone gets in between you and the check-out stand, you’re gonna’ pay more.

Analogously, why would you pay me to pay your fuel costs for your automobile? Why would you pay me to pay for your groceries?

We’ve done similarly with our healthcare in this nation for so long (since post WWII) that we’ve become accustomed to it, and act as if it can’t be changed.

Perhaps that “genie can’t be put back into the bottle.”

I don’t know.

But, we can darn sure (and should) do something about the environment in which it is allowed to operate!

Besides… if competition is good (and it is), why would the insurance companies (private enterprise) NOT want competition from the government?

It just doesn’t make sense… like most of what insurance companies say and do.

Whatever they say, I’m disinclined to do, simply because they proven time and time and time again, that they CANNOT be trusted.

They’re in it to make money.

They DON’T give a damn about you.

Take away their profit motive and what do they have left?

No reason for existence.

They’re NOT charitable organizations… like hospitals have historically been.

Christian charities have operated hospitals for longer than health insurance companies have peddled health insurance.

And they did a darn sight better when those whose filthy lucre turned it into a den of thieves stayed out.