Results of rightwingery?

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'Rightwingery', because of the recession, you mean?

There are other factors at work here, though. For instance, parents opting to under-immunize their children because of the fears regarding the safety and toxicity of vaccines, etc.
 
More like liberal hippies afraid to get their kids vaccinated.

But Washington State, according to a federal study last year of kindergarten-age children, had the highest percentage of parents in the nation who voluntarily exempted their children from one or more vaccines, out of fear of side effects or for philosophical reasons.
 
http://www.healthycal.org/archives/8001

Number of vaccinated kids drops steadily in California

Posted By Dan On March 28, 2012 @ 10:00 pm In Associated Press,California Health Report

With innovative programs, county officials encourage fearful parents to vaccinate
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As a growing number of Californians exempt their children from required immunizations, public health departments statewide are launching campaigns to try to persuade them to vaccinate and legislators are trying to make it harder for them to get exemptions. Photo: @alviseni/Flickr

By Hannah Guzik, California Health Report

Amanda Tarpening doesn’t want the state telling her to vaccinate her child.

And California public health officials don’t want her 17-month-old daughter, who has not been immunized, to fall ill or help spread a vaccine-preventable disease.

It’s a quandary that has physicians frustrated and parents such as Tarpening citing their First Amendment rights.

As a growing number of Californians exempt their children from required immunizations, public health departments statewide are launching campaigns to try to persuade them to vaccinate, and legislators are trying to make it harder for them to get exemptions.

Statewide, the number of fully vaccinated children has been falling steadily since 2004, when 92.9 percent of students entering kindergarten had all required immunizations, according to the California Department of Public Health. Only 90.7 percent — or 11,470 fewer kids — were fully vaccinated in 2010, the most recent year for which data are available.

“The trend results in a greater number of Californians being vulnerable to preventable illnesses,” said Dr. Gilberto Chavez, the state’s Center for Infectious Disease deputy director. “The risk of outbreaks and widespread illness in our communities increases as the number of families opting not to vaccine their children increases.”

Tarpening, a Ventura resident, says she understands the risks of not vaccinating her daughter, but she believes the vaccines themselves may pose greater risks.

“I don’t think we know enough about the long-term effects,” she said. “It might not be the vaccines themselves that are the problem, but they’re being carried by other chemicals and biological matter that could be contributing to health problems at large, like cancer or allergies or immune suppression.”
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In some California counties, the decline in kindergarten immunization rates has been especially marked, according to state statistics. Calaveras, Mariposa, Nevada and Tuolumne counties — all located in the northeast corner of the state — had 2010 rates between 73 and 75.3 percent, the lowest in the state. In 2004, all had immunization rates above 80 percent, with Tuolumne County’s rate as high as 91.3 percent.

Likewise, Santa Cruz, Marin, Sacramento, El Dorado, Mendocino, Humboldt, Trinity, Shasta and Siskiyou counties all had kindergarten vaccination rates below 85 percent in 2010. At some private schools in these areas, particularly those that cater to affluent families, immunization rates are in the single digits.

It is this population — college educated, middle to upper income — that is most likely to not vaccinate, according to Dave Maron, Shasta County Health and Human Services Agency program manager for communicable diseases and emergency preparedness.

Last month, Shasta County began an education campaign targeted at “these worried moms who wake up in the middle of night, at 2:30 a.m., and don’t have anyone to talk to, and so they get most of their information from the Internet,” Maron said. The county created shastashots.com, a website that provides facts on vaccines and an “ask the nurse” email link.

Ventura County, where Tarpening lives, has also seen immunization rates fall, and public health officials there have started organizing vaccination clinics at area parks and schools, even offering a drive-through flu shot station, said Dr. Robert Levin, health officer for Ventura County Public Health.

One Ventura County parent who’s been persuaded to vaccinate is Laura Neimeyer, who lives in Port Hueneme. Neimeyer initially considered not fully immunizing her son, now 20 months old, but said health experts convinced her otherwise.

“I want to keep my kid safe,” she said. “I trust that the experts have a vested interest in keeping my kid safe and maintaining herd immunity, so other people’s kids are safe too.”

Tarpening, meanwhile, says she hasn’t completely ruled out vaccinating her daughter, Faerah Tarpening, but it isn’t likely she will. Fortunately, Faerah remains healthy — one goal both Tarpening and public health officials can agree on.

“She’s a healthy kid,” Tarpening said, “and I’m thankful for that every single day.”
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These are parents that read the results in headlines of The Lancet report on 12 kids, (though that wasn't clear in media reports), back in college. Unfortunately they didn't read the retraction. The retraction came 12 years later, just when these 'educated' women and men were becoming parents. They read a new report regarding vaccinations when only the idea that it might be relevant in the future was imprinted. So, when they become parents, they want the best for their 'healthy child,' no immunizations.

Doctors should be addressing not only the dangers, but also the parents having been imprinted against vaccinating.
 
\\\(())/// said:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/h...ough-epidemic-hits-washington-state.html?_r=1
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(Excerpt from article) The pertussis test can cost up to $400 and delay treatment by days. About 14.6 percent of Skagit County residents have no health insurance, according to a state study conducted last year, up from 11.6 percent in 2008. (End)

Talking about health care and rightwingery....

(Excerpt)THERE are lots of important things to worry about these days: terrorism, the economy, climate change and, for Yankee fans, the loss of Mariano Rivera. But worry is a scarce commodity. Even a mother — Jewish or not — can’t worry about everything. So it is important that we limit our worries to real as opposed to imaginary risks.

One pernicious category of imaginary risks involves those created by users of the dreaded “slippery slope” arguments. Such arguments are dangerous because they are popular, versatile and often convincing, yet completely fallacious. Worse, they are creeping into an arena that should be above this sort of thing: the Supreme Court, in its deliberations on health care reform.

There is a DirecTV ad that humorously illustrates the basic form of the slippery-slope argument. A foreboding announcer intones a list of syllogisms that are enacted on screen: “When your cable company puts you on hold, you get angry. When you get angry, you go blow off steam. When you go blow off steam, accidents happen.” Later, we reach the finale: “You wake up in a roadside ditch. Don’t wake up in a roadside ditch.”

Although this ad is intended to be funny, arguments that make no more sense can and do affect public policy. The idea is that while Policy X may be acceptable, it will inevitably lead to the terrible Outcome Y, so it is vital that we prevent Policy X from ever being enacted. The problem is that such arguments are often made without any evidence that doing X makes Y more likely, much less inevitable. What percentage of people who are left on hold on the telephone end up in a roadside ditch?................

Given how flimsy slippery-slope arguments can be, it is downright scary that they might play an important role in the Supreme Court decision on the new health care law. The case before the court is whether it is constitutional for the federal government to penalize people who fail to buy health insurance.

As everyone concedes, we can’t include the popular rule that forbids insurance companies from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions unless we encourage nearly everyone to buy health insurance. Although most legal scholars seem to think that the law is constitutional, there is considerable question about whether the Supreme Court will rule that way. And the slippery-slope arguments being used here are just wacky.

Consider these now-famous comments about broccoli from Justice Antonin G. Scalia during the oral arguments. “Everybody has to buy food sooner or later, so you define the market as food,” he said. “Therefore, everybody is in the market. Therefore, you can make people buy broccoli.” Showing remarkable restraint, he did not mention anything about ending up in a roadside ditch.

Justice Scalia is arguing that if the court lets Congress create a mandate to buy health insurance, nothing could stop Congress from passing laws requiring everyone to buy broccoli and to join a gym. He and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. were asking the solicitor general to explain what the principle would be to stop the government from going so far. If the law stands, Justice Roberts suggested, “it seems to me that we can’t say there are limitations on what Congress can do under its commerce power.” He added, “Given the significant deference we accord to Congress in this area, all bets are off, and you could regulate that market in any rational way.”

Please stop! The very fact that a slippery slope is being cited as grounds for declaring the law unconstitutional — despite that “significant deference” usually given to laws passed by Congress — tells you all that you need to know about the argument’s validity. Can anyone imagine Congress passing a broccoli mandate law, much less the court allowing it to take effect?

The irony is that Justices Roberts and Scalia are warning of a risk that they and their colleagues have the power to prevent. Surely, the justices have the conceptual resources to draw a distinction between the health care market and the market for broccoli. And even if they don’t, then all the briefs, the zillions of blog posts and a generation’s worth of economic literature can help them. (End)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/b...e-logic-vs-health-care-law-economic-view.html
 
\\\(())/// said:
But we can't raise taxes on job creators to fund public health, can we? Wouldn't that be Socialism, punishing success?
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That's the right wing solution to providing an adequate number of jobs. The fewer the number of healthy people the fewer jobs necessary.
 
Don't tax cuts and ending social programs produce universal prosperity?
 
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