The Commonwealth Fund has completed a state-by-state scorecard which "assesses states’ performance on health care relative to achievable benchmarks for 38 indicators of access, quality, costs, and health outcomes."
From the Reuters story on the report:
The report found that all of the states that have made healthcare reforms provide better access to medical treatment and prevention and mostly avoid costly hospital procedures.
Residents of Vermont have the best healthcare in the country, the foundation said. The small northern state, which embarked on a radical plan to provide all citizens with healthcare less than a decade ago, also leads the nation in "equity," or making sure that people of lower income groups have healthcare....
"The patterns indicate that public policies, plus state and local health care systems, can make a difference," according to the report, which was also conducted by Joel Cantor, director of the Center for State Health Policy at Rutgers University.
Hawaii followed Vermont, and Iowa was ranked third on the scorecard. Neither state has a plan to reform healthcare, but Minnesota, which has created public-private collaborations on healthcare, ranks fourth, followed by Maine, which has also implemented sweeping reforms. Massachusetts -- the Vermont neighbor that recently began a universal health insurance program -- was seventh.
At the other end of the spectrum, Mississippi has the worst healthcare, according to the scorecard. Oklahoma fares mildly better, followed by Louisiana and Arkansas.
Generally, the report found, states in the South, Southwest and lower Midwest have worse insurance rates and less access to good medical treatment.
Howard Dean knew what he was doing in Vermont, and it worked. Creating public plans and not leaving citizens up the whims of the insurance industry also works.
The other telling thing from the report shows up on this map. The dark blue areas are the 13 states that have the worst performance in providing healthcare, which should be of special interest to Harry Reid, Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu and any number of House Blue Dogs.
(Click on the image for the interactive map)
None of these Senators should be standing in the way of a robust public option. The map also demonstrates the danger in allowing states to opt out of a public healthcare plan, because the states that would be most likely to do so are those showing up on the map above as having the worst care. They shouldn't need the sweetener of an opt-out option to make them do the right thing.