We're 49! We're 49!

I can't tell you how sick to death I am at having to see stories like this one:

Although child healthcare in the U.S. varies widely from state to state, Mississippi is rated as one of the worst in the union for child healthcare, a new study reports.

According to a recently released state scorecard on health system performance by the Commonwealth Fund Commission, Mississippi ranked 49 out of 50 states and the District of Columbia. The two states with worse rankings than Mississippi were Florida, 50, and Oklahoma, 51. Iowa was ranked the best in child healthcare, followed by Vermont...

...The state scorecard focused on 13 indicators on child health system performance and the five dimensions of performance access, quality, costs, equity and the potential to lead healthy lives. Income, ethnicity and insurance were used to measure equity.

Mississippi ranked 43 in access to child healthcare, 47 in quality, 48 in equity and 10 in cost.

Well, at least it's cheap hard-to-get bad healthcare.

Lucky kids.

UPDATE: The CFC has an interactive map of the study's findings here, where you can see where your own state ranks. And in so doing I found another ranking the article above didn't even mention. Mississippi ranks 50th in kids' potential to lead healthy lives. Nice.