The Southern Highland Reader

NATIONAL–The lead from Jonathan Alter’s current Newsweek column:

The United States has two parties now—the Obama Party and the Fox Party. The Obama Party is larger, but it is unfocused and its troops are whiny. The Fox Party, which shows up en masse to harass politicians, is noisy and practiced in the art of simplistic obstruction. As the health-care debate rages, it’s the Party of Sort-of-Maybe-Yes versus the Party of Hell No! The Yessers are more lackadaisical because they’ve forgotten the stakes—they’ve forgotten that this is the most important civil-rights bill in a generation, though it is rarely framed that way.

There are few civil rights issues, it’s worth adding, that Alter’s “Party of Hell No!”, taken as a mindset, haven’t fallen on the dark side of. From Selma to labor, and from child labor to McCarthy, they are as dependable as can be.

Here’s some current info on health care in North Carolina:

Families USA and Action for Children North Carolina jointly released a new report today that found that family health care premiums rose an estimated 5.3 times faster than earnings for North Carolina’s workers from 2000 through 2009. In that 10-year period, family health insurance premiums rose by 96.8 percent, while median earnings rose by only 18.4 percent.

The Families USA report for North Carolina is an update of its original ground-breaking 2006 report, which was the first of its kind to document these changes on a state-specific basis. Among the new report’s key findings are:

For family health coverage provided through the workplace in North Carolina, the average annual health insurance premium (employer and worker share of premiums combined) in the 2000-2009 period rose from $6,649 to $13,083-an increase of $6,434, or 96.8 percent.

Between 2000 and 2009, the median earnings of North Carolina’s workers rose from $23,080 to $27,330-an increase of $4,250, or 18.4 percent.

Plus, St. Pete Times’ invaluable Truth-O-Meter, the Health Care page.

Tags: family health insurance, Health, health insurance, North Carolina

Related posts:

1. Opinion: Health care reform and “unheathy ignorance”
2. Interesting numbers on health and health care in North Carolina
3. Can’t afford health insurance? Party with your elected officials!
4. Mental health reform in the hands of the Governor-elect
5. Washington Post on NC health care crisis

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