It had to play out this way sooner or later. If you cut enough benefits and Food Stamps people starve, or go without their Medicines. If a Mother-to-be can't afford to eat or take her prenatal meds, these babys are born weakened.

HOLLANDALE, Miss. — For decades, Mississippi and neighboring states with large black populations and expanses of enduring poverty made steady progress in reducing infant death. But, in what health experts call an ominous portent, progress has stalled and in recent years the death rate has risen in Mississippi and several other states.

The setbacks have raised questions about the impact of cuts in welfare and Medicaid and of poor access to doctors, and, many doctors say, the growing epidemics of obesity, diabetes and hypertension

Gov. Haley Barbour should accept some of the blame for this. His need to pinch pennys away from those that could least afford the loss has caused much of this according to the article.

As a result, the number of non-elderly people, mainly children, covered by the Medicaid and CHIP programs declined by 54,000 in the 2005 and 2006 fiscal years. According to the Mississippi Health Advocacy Program in Jackson, some eligible pregnant women were deterred by the new procedures from enrolling.

One former Medicaid official, Maria Morris, who resigned last year as head of an office that informed the public about eligibility, said that under the Barbour administration, her program was severely curtailed.

“The philosophy was to reduce the rolls and our activities (to help people) were contrary to that policy,” she said.

Mississippi is only the first to report these numbers, I believe it's worse than we know. We should not be surpised that Dr. Robert Robinson, Mississippi’s Medicaid director called it “pure conjecture.” What public official that has anything to do with admin. would admit to killing babys to save a buck or 2 ?

The plain truth is being spoken by some. It's not a complicated idea if you care about people at all, you knew it already.

Oleta Fitzgerald, southern regional director for the Children’s Defense Fund, said: “When you see drops in the welfare rolls, when you see drops in Medicaid and children’s insurance, you see a recipe for disaster. Somebody’s not eating, somebody’s not going to the doctor and unborn children suffer.”

This is a 3 pg article online, and parts of it begin to sound like the blaming of the victim we have become all to used to, but I won't go there right. You can judge that for yourself. It should wake all of us up to fact that this is just the first place it has been made public. Mississippi being the poorest state in the nation, and therefore the most vulnerable is just the beginning of our slide into being that Third World Country we have seen predicted for a while now. With the news that is in this final quote you may recognize your own community and what is happening to those that live in it.

The state Health Department has cut back its system of clinics, in part because of budget shortfalls and a shortage of nurses. Some clinics that used to be open several days a week are now open once a week and some offer no prenatal care.

Here's the link , I hope you have a strong stomach and a even stronger will to stop this crap now. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/he...