The Rachel Maddow Show: The Sorry State of South Carolina
By Heather Tuesday Sep 22, 2009 1:00pm
Rachel talks to native South Carolinian Eugene Robinson about the sorry state of South Caronlina's education and health care systems in contrast to the attitudes of their politicians who are all opposed to health care reform.
MADDOW: We‘ve had that lot of reaction to our report last night about the appalling new data out of South Carolina that read like a statewide cry for health care reform.
Last night, we reported that South Carolina has among the country‘s worst women‘s reproductive health care. Rates of teen pregnancy, low birth weight infants, and infant mortality that are among the highest in the country. The rate at which young women in South Carolina received the important and effective HPV vaccine is also among the lowest in the country.
But wait, there‘s more—and it‘s all bad. The state has the fifth highest rate of obesity. It has the highest stroke death rate of all states in the country, and has maintained that distinction for five decades. It has the second highest death rate for oral cancer. The life expectancy in South Carolina is the third worst in the union.
If Governor Mark Sanford, for example, decided to move to Argentina permanently, he would be among people expected to live at least a year and a half longer than South Carolinians are—in Argentina.
Yes, South Carolina needs better health care. And to get it, it may need some civil servants who are slightly more interested in getting that for the state.
Governor Sanford, considered just a year ago a possible presidential contender in 2012, led the fight to turn down stimulus funding from the federal government, shunning federal unemployment benefits when South Carolina had the second highest rate of joblessness in the country. We should‘ve seen that as a symbol.
And that was all before he offered this fine moment in leadership.
