We all know that Governor Brownback and the Republicans of Kansas have led their state into a colossal free market, tax cutting, small government experiment. And we all know that the result has been a budget disaster.
I wondered what has been the result in other areas, such as public health. What I found was what I expected.
Republicans in Kansas have succeeded in killing off minorities faster than ever.
While the infant mortality rate in Kansas has continued a historical trend of declining for whites, it has turned upwards and is now increasing for minority populations. Not surprising, given the savage cuts to state health programs that disproportionately help the poor, mostly minorities. The infant mortality rate for black babies rose to 10.4 in 2015 from 10.3 in 2014; the mortality rate for Hispanic babies rose to 7.5 in 2014 from 7.2 in 2013, and rose again in 2015 to 7.6. (The rate is the number of deaths per 1,000 births).
While the overall death rate for Hispanics has continued to decline, the death rate for “Black Non-Hispanic” stopped declining in 2013 at 949.3 (per 100,000) and increased in both of the next two years, to 973.8 in 2015.
There has been an increase in the death rate among the elderly as well. For Kansans aged 85 and older, the death rate has risen from 133.4 in 2009, the year before Brownback was elected, to 146.4 in 2015.
The statistics can be found in the 2015 Kansas Annual Summary of Vital Statistics, by the state's Bureau of Epidemiology and Public Health Informatics, Kansas Department of Health and Environment.
In looking for these statistics, I noticed in the search results some stories on a spike in the rates of pregnancy related deaths in Texas. The 2011, Republicans in the Texas Legislature provided only $37.9 million to the state’s family planning budget, a crushing 2/3 cut of $73.6 million from $111.5 million the year before. As a result, 82 women’s health clinics were forced to close, a third of which belonged to Planned Parenthood.
Five years later, in its September 2016 issue, the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology reported that the maternal mortality rate in the United States increased 27%, from 18.8 in 2000, to 23.8 in 2014. Over the same period, the maternal mortality rate decreased in the rest of the world.
But what was striking in the USA data was that while some states such as Democratically controlled California, improved by lowering their maternal mortality rate, the rate in Republican, conservative, and libertarian Texas, nearly doubled.
The London Guardian reported,
From 2000 to the end of 2010, Texas’s estimated maternal mortality rate hovered between 17.7 and 18.6 per 100,000 births. But after 2010, that rate had leaped to 33 deaths per 100,000, and in 2014 it was 35.8. Between 2010 and 2014, more than 600 women died for reasons related to their pregnancies.
No other state saw a comparable increase.
Kossack lizbirge brought us this bad news at the end of September 2016, but it did not get the attention it deserved.
These statistical developments should be flung in the face of all Republicans, especially now as they launch their new plans to destroy the Affordable Care Act, Social Security, Medicare, and the rest of America’s social safety net.
But don’t think Republicans are unaware that these statistics of increasing death rates and misery will hurt them. Lizbirge reported that officials in Texas refused to release data to doctors who wanted to study the problem:
The information is being kept secret by Texas Department of State Health Services. “It's part of a broader trend, the slow erosion of the state's open records law and withering access to information about how state government does business.”
Recall that in North Carolina in May 2015, Republicans eliminated all funding for the Center on Poverty, Work, and Opportunity, housed at the University of North Carolina Chapel, run by law professor Gene Nichol. The center aggregated, analyzed, and reported on statistical data aimed at measuring the the well being of the poor and minorities. A leading member of the network of reactionary think tanks funded by North Carolina billionaire Art Pope, openly admitted that Republicans forced the center to close because it is an “advocate for the poor.”
In Kansas, Salon reported in October 2016, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback’s trickle-down economics experiment is so bad the state stopped reporting on it:
Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, the Republican responsible for the state’s business-friendly tax policies, is now trying to erase any evidence of just how wildly unsuccessful his Reaganomics experiment has proved. Last month the state’s Council of Economic Advisors, which Brownback created in 2011 and still chairs, quietly discontinued quarterly reports originally intended to showcase the state’s rapid economic growth. (During Brownback’s re-election campaign in 2014, the reports were scrubbed from the internet and subsequently available only upon request.)
If I were an editor or news director, I would assign people to start tracking health statistics. These kinds of stories are what journalists should be tracking down and writing in the Age of Trump and Total Republican Rule. But that would require a lot more work than listening to police scanners and chasing ambulances and fire fighters.
So, it’s going to be up to us. As Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell lead the Republicans on their blood letting frenzy, we should pose the question directly and in their face:
How many people are they going to kill with their policies? And how willing are they to be held personally accountable for any increase in people dying?