From the Net: 'Black Children’s Lives Short and Cheap in U.S.' (M. Coleman-Adebayo at BAR)

Poverty is closer to the norm in the United States than most Americans realize. “More than half of Americans earn $26,000 a year – barely above the poverty level of $22,000 a year.” Yet the U.S. spends 50 percent more per person on health care than Europe, with deplorable results, especially for Black children.

Black Children’s Lives Short and Cheap in U.S.

by BAR editor and columnist Marsha Coleman-Adebayo

“Pharmaceutical drugs, as an example, are 40 percent costlier here than anywhere else in the world.”

“The U.S. spends 50 percent more on healthcare than Europe, yet a black child born in Washington D.C. has less of a chance of reaching his 1st birthday, than a child born in Barbados,” Jonathan Gruber, Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist and adviser to President Barack Obama on the Affordable Health Care Act said this week in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Reflect on that information – we regularly tell other countries how to conduct their affairs and yet it is clear that we cannot manage ours.

In a New York Times article by Sabrina Tavernise quoting census data, she reported: "The number of Americans living below the official poverty line, 46.2 million people, was the highest number in the 52 years the bureau has been publishing figures on it.... Minorities were hit hardest. Blacks experienced the highest poverty rate, at 27 percent, up from 25 percent in 2009, and Hispanics rose to 26 percent from 25 percent. For whites, 9.9 percent lived in poverty, up from 9.4 percent in 2009. Asians were unchanged at 12.1 percent."

... read full story at Black Agenda Report.