A Tale of Two Americas Through the Lens of Health Care

Two articles published by the Washington Post and the New York Times this weekend focused on extremely different versions of the U.S. healthcare system: The Post feature— part of a series on “Disabled America,” which focuses on rural populations receiving federal disability checks — bears the dateline of Pemiscot County, Missouri, a place where the dwindling population has an unemployment rate of eight percent. The Times’ feature is part of the series “The Velvet Rope Economy,” which focuses on “how growing disparities in wealth are leading to privileged treatment of the rich.” Nelson Schwartz reports from San Francisco, currently the second-most densely populated major city after New York, with the third-highest median household income. Known for being plagued by homelessness, the poverty rate is 12 percent, lower than the national average, and the unemployment rate is 2.6 percent.
In the Post, Terence McCoy reports on a multi-generational family on disability that struggles to make ends meet in “a county of endless farmland, where the poverty rate is more than twice the national figure, life expectancy is seven years shorter than the national average and the disability rate is nearly three times what it is nationally.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.