The good news is that South Dakota didn’t slip as far in the U.S. News & World Report 2019 rankings of states as Iowa did. While Iowa dropped from #1 to #14, South Dakota dropped from #14 last year to #20 this year.
We rank middlingly on the most heavily weighted categories, health care (#32), education (#18), and economy (#27). We’re a model of fiscal stability (#3) and, despite all of our CAFO manure factories and clouds of dicamba, natural environment (#2).
Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa, and North Dakota all outrank us. Fiscal stability and natural environment are the only categories in which we beat Minnesota.
Think you’re third in fiscal stability because you’ve swallowed your pride and let other states send you money to educate your children and keep you afloat? Have some dignity and raise taxes. Then you can hold your heads up as Americans that pay their own way.
https://siouxcityjournal.com/news/state-and-regional/iowa/iowa-loses-best-state-status-drop-to-no-rekindles-state/article_a2fc9ed3-d6f9-5748-8056-3da0ae3526f5.html
iowa had an increase in preventable diseases among Medicaid recipients once the state privatized Medicaid.
Guv Reynolds says iowa is controlling health care costs, but it seems they are denying patients the care they need to control the costs.
Good point, Porter: US News should assign a 49th of our ranking points to every other state under fiscal stability—or the commensurate reciprocal fraction to the number of states, mostly blue, who are net givers to the rest of us welfare states.
Way off topic- PT 73 from Mchale’s Navy set to sea without Ensign Parker who has passed at age 85. RIP funny guy, Tim Conway.
Loved McHale’s Navy. Remember Fugi (Yoshio Yoda)? He was one of those characters along with Hop Sing on Bonanza that were popular before we learned we were insulting an entire race of Americans.
I didn’t post this , in case Cory gets upset about hijacking the thread, but Paladin’s San Francisco Hotel had Hey Boy.
I loved Tim Conway on The Carol Burnett Show, thought it was his best venue.
I see Minnesota is #3. Yay! Ranked near the top in opportunity and only 1 below SD in natural environment.
SD could improve health care at minimal cost via Medicaid. It’s cruel of the SDGOP not to. I guess after the citizens pass the People Power IM they’ll have to imitate Idaho and Maine by IMing Medicaid. SD is small enough to do a significant amount of direct democracy.
SD could jump on IMing an income tax to reduce taxes on 75%+ of citizens, then put the $ in education on all levels.
Fully fund an amazing, guts out group to go all out to reform prisons. Look at Portugal’s system and other places, then implement, by IM if necessary. Attract + attention to the state. When people see those kinds of things they will see OPPORTUNITY! They will come and that score will rise.
The state Must Take Big Risks on New and Different Things. It will be scary and difficult and risky and exciting and growing and changing. That does not mean an end to a way of life. It means adding more to it.
iowa gives you better value for your syllable/vowel buck and no wasted consonants.
I have given up trying to make sense of health care ratings.
When you have a population which includes anti-vaxxers, home birthers, smokers, meth & opioid addicts, herbalists and devotees of essential oils, just to name a few, are you rating the quality of the health care delivery system or are the statistics a reflection of something else? How can they even try to quantify this stuff?
If somebody doesn’t get a flu shot, then gets the flu, ends up getting pneumonia, continues to smoke, treats himself with essential oils, never goes to see a doctor, and ultimately dies, how does that affect the state’s rating for access to healthcare? Quality of healthcare? How do they figure that out?
That’s ridiculous, Anne Beal.
grudznick has conducted a study.
#1 The Great State of South Dakota
#6 Wyoming
#9 North Dakota, a Legendary Place
#10 Montana
#12 Nebraska, touting itself on being boring
#32 Minnesota, the libbie bastion of libbyism and still not quite Chicago, as much as they try
#42 Iowa, pigs, poop, stink and slow roads
The scorecard of scorecards shows mine is best.
Anne Beal, I hate to say it, but you do have a point. I know of folks that have health insurance that still refuse to go to the doctor. They treat themselves for all sorts of weird crap with essential oils along with other voodoo pills and then contaminate the rest of us with their crud. Their $30.00 office copay to be treated, would more than cover what they spend on the witch doctor for their essence of bull poo.
Anne Beal poses the question: If somebody doesn’t get a flu shot, then gets the flu, ends up getting pneumonia, continues to smoke, treats himself with essential oils, never goes to see a doctor, and ultimately dies, how does that affect the state’s rating for access to healthcare?
A – Somebody means one person. One person has zero affect on the healthcare rating. A hundred people that don’t take care of themselves properly have nearly zero affect on healthcare rating. What has a giant affect is the skinflint Republicans that refuse to offer Medicaid expansion to the needy of SD.
Anne Beal poses as a nurse but continues to step on the needs of sick people to keep her Republican cheapskates from taking blame (and being rightly embarrassed) for the highly diminished state of healthcare in South Dakota.
Without trying to figure out why Anne wants to dismiss objective data that show South Dakota is not as healthy as 31 other states, which ranking I prefer to view as additional cause for serious analysis of our state health care policies and practices, I offer the USNWR explanation of its healthcare rankings:
Two thirds of the score comes from objective measures of institutional action. One third of the score comes from aggregate measures of personal health. As Porter notes, the question isn’t about any specific person’s behavior; the question is about why we would find higher rates of any particular malady or unhealthy behavior in South Dakota than in neighboring states and what we might be able to do differently to reduce that malady or unhealthy behavior to improve public health and reduce our health care costs.
Thanks for the explanation Cory.
If you’ve never lived in a higher ranking state in health care (Minnesota is 10th), you haven’t experienced how nice it is to have that security that you’re not either hated or ignored for being poor. How to help people with less is always a topic of discussion every legislative session here; not how to take more away from them.
I’ll bet Porter and Don can say the same about their states. In all cases, just as in DC, the party that initiates these conversations, that listens to people who struggle, that cares about more than where the $ comes from? Democrats. Every. Damn. Time.
If you want a state legislature that is on your side, vote for Democrats. Period.