Following the 2008 Presidential Election? Starting today, I will be posting a regular weekly blog on the election and the issues at the heart of the political debates. For each issue, you will be able to interact with a map to find out more about the problem, find out what the candidates are saying and where they stand on the issue, weigh in on your own opinion and see immediately how others around the country feel about the issue. So, stop by every Wednesday and get to know the issues and the candidates! Today’s focus is on health care reform.

Issue: Should the U.S. government ensure universal access to health care?

Looks like Michael Moore is at it again – This time attacking the U.S. health care system. His latest film, SICKO, takes jabs at the large, profit driven insurance companies and illustrates through a series of satirical vignettes how the United States, as one of the wealthiest nations in the world, has a health care system that is far from accessible to many. Not surprising, this issue has been central to the recent political debates.

One aspect of this problem that people are talking about is access to health insurance. As Michael Moore and many others have recently noted, nearly 45 million people in the U.S. do not have health insurance. That’s roughly 15% of the population.

Here’s a little more insight on the problem. The map below plots the percentage of individuals with no health insurance by county, using 2000 data from the U.S. Census, Current Population Survey. One can see that the real area of concern is in portions of the South and most prominently, along the U.S. – Mexico border. In fact, in Hudspeth County, along the border, nearly 40% are without health insurance.

How are the candidates weighing in on the issue?

Here are some revealing quotes from some of the recent presidential debates:

Hillary Clinton: “What’s important and what I learned in the previous effort is you’ve got to have the political will… standing firm when the inevitable attacks come from the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies…”

John Edwards: “I’m proud of the fact that I was the first person to come out with a specific, truly universal health care plan…I’d pay for it by getting rid of Bush’s tax cuts for people who make $200,000 a year.”

Rudy Giuliani: “The problem with our health insurance is it’s government and employer-dominated. People don’t make individual choices. It’s your health; you should own your health insurance.”

John McCain “Another one I think is important is a $3,000 tax credit for people to be able to purchase health insurance, so low- income Americans will have access to health care…”

Barack Obama: “My belief is that most families want health care but they can’t afford it. And so my emphasis is on driving down the costs, taking on the insurance companies, making sure that they are limited in the ability to extract profits and deny coverage…”

Mitt Romney: “The market can work to solve our health care needs, and that’s the great, exciting news.

How do you weigh in on the issue?

Want to find out more about the issue of health reform in the United States?

Use the key word “health” in geocommons to find a variety of data on different aspects of the issue – e.g., access to physicians, hospice care, health insurance coverage for immigrants and mortality and incidence rates for a range of diseases and disorders.

Popularity: 3% [?]

A few weeks ago James Fee wrote a blog post about a debate he had with Steven Citron-Pousty concerning the usefulness of GeoCommons. From a high level the argument came down to the GIS vs. Neogeogrpahy debate. There were great quotes on both sides like “freaking sweet” in support and “pretty worthless” in the bashing category. Over all we were excited to see that GeoCommons had started a debate in the GIS community. The intent of GeoCommons had originally not been to provide a resource to the GIS community, but to provide access to GIS data and a few tools to the rest of the world. The GIS community always had access to the data and the tools, so I had figured GeoCommons would not even pop up on the radar. In hindsight I think we should be providing mutual resources to each other, so with that in mind here are few thoughts on the topic.

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 10% [?]

In the recent blog posting by Laurie on drunk driving fatalities Steve made a great point about drunk driving rates versus totals. The map we made showed which counties in the USA had the highest total drunk driving fatalities. Steve brought up the point that the map is skewed by population. The more people in a county the more drunk driving fatalities that are likely. The other way you can look at this is as a rate. For every 100,000 people how many drunk driving fatalities are there. So, David Hampton took on the task of calculating a drunk driving fatality rate for counties. He found a data set in GeoCommons with county population for 2005 and took the drunk driving fatality rate data set and did some math to extrapolate a rate per 100,000 inhabitants for every county in the USA. The winner….Bedford County, VA which is part of the Lynchburg metropolitan area. Bedford has 973 drunk driving fatalities per 100,000 residents, or roughly 1 in 100 residents are killed by a drunk driver.

Popularity: 2% [?]

If you’ve been following the immigration debate, perhaps you’ve heard of a report called The INS/FBI Statistical Report on Undocumented Immigrants. Numerous bloggers have been using its startling statistics to add more fuel to the already emotionally heated discussion. For example, it claims that 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens, and 75% of those on the most wanted list in Los Angeles, Phoenix and Albuquerque are illegal aliens.

As the report makes its way around the web, some people are starting to question its accuracy and its source. Many are calling it bogus. Reading all of this, I decided to go out and see what kind of reliable statistics are out there on the topic. It was a tough endeavor, let me tell you. After many dead ends, I finally came across the 2004 State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP) report. The SCAAP provides federal payments to states and localities that incurred costs for incarcerating undocumented criminal aliens. Contained in the report are illegal inmate counts, and the number of days they spent in jail. Assuming states want to be reimbursed by the federal government, and thus report as many illegals as possible, the data should be somewhat realistic.

How does what I found compare to the INS/FBI Report? The INS/FBI document claims that 40% of all inmates in Arizona detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally. When I compared illegal immigrant days spent in jail to total inmate days spent in jail, I got illegals at 9%. Obviously, the comparison is slightly flawed (I’d have used total prisoners, but it wasn’t included in report), yet the large spread is noteworthy.

Moving on to the map below, you can see that California is far and away the state with the most illegal immigrant criminals. In fact, it has roughly four times as many illegal inmates as does Texas, which ranks second. Rounding out the top five are New York, Arizona, and Florida.

Popularity: 2% [?]