WARNING: BOOK LEARNIN' PEOPLE INVOLVED - Harvard study shows Medicaid expansion improves health

In a study sure to be derided by our Mississippi Republican cognoscenti (here's a link so they can look that word up) as something from the northern-librul-iv'ry tower-socialist-smarty pants gays, Harvard researchers have documented a decline in death rates in New York, Arizona, and Maine, three states that expanded Medicaid coverage in 2001.  From the Bloomberg article:

Three states that expanded Medicaid in 2001 and 2002, New York, Arizona and Maine (BSTIME), collectively saw a 6.1 percent decline in the death rate for people age 20 to 64 compared to neighboring states, according to the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health, led by assistant professor Benjamin Sommers, found larger reductions among minorities and low-income people.

Harvard Study: Jackson among most corrupt state capitals

A study by Harvard's Kennedy School of Government lays out what many of us living in the Magnolia State know well: Jackson is home to one of the most corrupt state governments in the country. The study (see below) focuses on the relationship between state government corruption and the relative isolation of the state capital from the majority of the state's population. At first, naming Jackson as a leader in corruption would seem to undermine the theory of the study, which is that corruption grows the further the state capital is from major population centers. After all, Jackson is the largest city in Mississippi by far, and sits at the center of the state's largest metropolitan area.

Reading a bit more of the study, you'll see that in actuality, the study is a condemnation of our state's media over the period from 1979-2002. (That's the era from which data was collected for the study.) I have no reason to believe it's improved since then, especially considering that Mississippi's only statewide newspaper, the Clarion-Ledger, appears to be dwindling away before our very eyes. Thanks, Gannett!

Facts like these are what animate many citizens, from Tea Party members to good-government Democrats. With the demise of the stalwarts of old media, hopefully new media can do a better job over the next generation informing the populous of what goes on underneath the dome at the corner of Mississippi and Congress in Downtown Jackson.

Of course, they'll have to actually care about what's going on, which is a whole other matter altogether. (The authors of the study appear to think that state capital isolation is what breeds lower education spending, while I can't help but wonder if the two are related at all, and if they are, whether or not that's a chicken and egg problem.)

Here's a link to an L.A. Times article on the study which gives a synopsis, and here's the actual Harvard study itself:

Harvard Study on State Government Corruption