Break the blue states & the red states cull blue voters who go to blue states & maintain electoral college advantage.

Such a thing may not happen quickly or soon, but it did happen during the depression. People migrated, and in quite large numbers. I'm from California, and that migration affected that state dramatically. Desperate families did whatever was required to get there. For several years following, that migration created a new underclass in California, which really didn't go away until after WWII, when other reasons for resettlement came into play.

The small agricultural community I grew up in in the 50s still had remnants of that migration that persisted. The "Okies," for example, lived primarily in one section of town and were easily recognized by their distinctive accents. The competition between the migrants from the midwest and the migrants from Mexico was harsh, since both competed for the same type of jobs.

I remember the tensions. They're pretty much gone now, some sixty years later, but they were real, and extended into the school system while I was attending primary and secondary school there.

Economics drove that migration. Healthcare issues may drive the next one, particularly if we go through another economic slump. It's a real concern.

and the 2020 census will show it. A lot of red states will lose representation.

where they are are likely to go where they can. It's a different driver of migration, but will become more important, I think.

on red states as they lost their tax base. I can imagine them trying to close their borders. Blue states might attempt to close theirs too to keep from being overwhelmed by immigrants.

It would be best to nip this in the bud by dealing with the Russia thing and halting the Republican agenda.

The answer is to fix the problem and prevent such a thing from happening.

Young/healthy people would might in the other direction and would move back if they developed a serious condition.

to moving to red states, including low housing costs and other things. And yet, there is no real strong migration to them. Anyone can search to compare housing costs, for example, but such a search would also include a job search and other searches. The story is discovered during that process, and so people aren't moving to such places in droves.

The last couple censuses have down just the opposite (a net out-migration from blue states). The good news has been that some are thus marginally bluer... Not that people aren't leaving the reliably blue states.

are cashing in on home equities in high-value areas and moving to places where home values are lower. Many boomers have built substantial equities in homes over the years, but are cash poor. My wife and I did something like that, although not for that reason. We sold the home I had owned for over 30 years in the Central Coast of California back in 2004 for a shockingly high price when we move to Minnesota, and paid less than half that for a larger home in St. Paul, MN. The remainder became part of our retirement investment.

Plenty of people are doing that as an economic strategy who live in some blue states where housing prices are far higher than elsewhere in the country. That's at least a partial explanation for that movement out of some blue states. However, it's a different sort of migration than I'm talking about.

Home equities are no longer certain, as the middle to latter part of the last decade demonstrated. God knows what the current clown show will do to them.

Several European, Central American and South American nations cater to such emigrees. Personally, I consider that to be a last-ditch alternative, but I'd consider it, all the same. The attraction, of course, is a low cost of living. The drawbacks, though, can be significant, including healthcare availability and quality.

Of course there is no guarantee that won't be replaced with coupons.

You couldn't use it where you are, but you're still paying for it, so there wouldn't be any penalty if you come back. Mine is $109/month. You could drop the supplemental insurance, though, and re-enroll in that at any open enrollment period.

There's always an answer.

though.

than that. Looking at cost of living on a monthly basis, given the concept of renting an apartment, that monthly cost in the top 10 most popular countries with retirees ranges between about $1500-$2500 per month, and that's the total cost of living, including rent, food and other normal expenses. Compare that with the cost of living almost anywhere in the US, and you can see that $109 per month is insignificant, really.

Of course, this is for healthy retirees. Medical care is another matter, although it is generally much less expensive in those countries than in the United States. In some cases, if you acquire permanent residence status, you are covered by that nation's health care system, but that varies.

There's a lot of information about this on the web. It has become an alternative choice for some retirees without large retirement savings, since it is actually possible to live on a couple's Social Security benefits alone in some of those countries. For those who own property outright in the US, the proceeds from the sale of that property makes an excellent buffer.

Typically such retirees have their SS benefits automatically deposited in a US bank account and transfer funds to the local banking system. It's easy to do nowadays.

although in the past both Florida and North Carolina have been purple/blue.

http://demography.cpc.unc.edu/2017/02/10/north-carolina-population-growth-at-highest-levels-since-2010/


Like you, we left California (although many years earlier in 1988) and moved several times before ending up in NC. At the time we moved here, in 2000, it was a purple/blue state. We've been very distressed since Republicans took over the state government after Dems didn't turn out in 2010 and the Repubs gerrymandered state districts. It's only with the help of court decisions that districts are finally being redrawn and we managed to kick the Republican governor out in 2016 but the Republican Legislature has been passing laws attempting to limit the now Dem Governor's role. It's a really nasty fight.

My point, though, is that people can move and governments can change from red to blue and back again. Look how many years Reagan and Republicans were in control in California--before he was exported to damage the entire country. Now California is blue once again. You can move--and be screwed--as we have been several times as state governments change.

That Golden Door is open only for the chosen few it seems.

Let's hope we can turn this around, starting in 2018.

time goes on, I think.

consider a working class family in, say Alabama, with a child who has serious health issues that cannot be accommodated there. Meanwhile, another state, say Minnesota, has set up their own healthcare system that ensures that poor people receive healthcare, even if they cannot afford to pay for it, particularly for children.

If that family has a car and enough gas money to get to Minnesota, the parents may just decide one day that it's time to move on. That's what happened in the Dust Bowl days. People piled what they could in and on the family's creaky automobile and headed West. They really had no alternative, except to starve.

Much of the internal migratory behavior in the United States has been economic in nature. Healthcare is economic in nature, and life-threatening, much as the Dust Bowl was. People will move, if they must, to survive or to give their children a chance to survive.

in that scenario, all of the red states will eventually have only 3 EC votes each.

Those changes could be very hard to predict, though.

Anyone who has driven to California has encountered the "Agricultural Inspection Stations" located near the border on every major road into the state from all directions. What most people don't know is that those were set up during the Dust Bowl migrations and were really designed to discourage migrants from entering California. They didn't work for that purpose, but are still there and still operating. They could easily be converted into "Migrant Discouragement Stations" again, if needed. In fact, some of them serve that purpose today, and are also used by ICE to stop undocumented immigrants.

California Lawmakers Advance Single-Payer Health Bill

snip:
A proposal to substantially remake California’s health care system by eliminating insurance companies and guaranteeing coverage for everyone has cleared the first legislative hurdle.

The state Senate Health Committee voted to advance the measure on Wednesday as hundreds of nurses and advocates converged on the state Capitol to show their support.

We have the chance to make universal health care a reality now,” Democratic state Sen. Ricardo Lara of the Los Angeles-area city of Bell Gardens said last month. “It’s time to talk about how we get to health care for all that covers more and costs less.”

The measure would guarantee health coverage with no out-of-pocket costs for all California residents, including people living in the country illegally.

https://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/2017/04/26/california-lawmakers-consider-plan-to-create-single-payer-health-system/

economic opportunities, and California, as it was during the Dust Bowl, becomes an attractive option for people looking to get out of their current situation. However, housing costs and other factors will be quite a surprise to migrants. Still, that has not stopped migrants from Mexico and other places from going there. There are solutions, even for California's high cost of living.

The specific patient population that I am entrusted with....ALL of them have many preexisting conditions.
I wonder how our practice will fare under trumpcare.
With that being said....I wonder if this will cause the major healthcare centers to close down and relocate to patient-friendly states?

we have a glut of healthcare facilities. Of major health systems, too. Same day appointments, even with specialists are not uncommon, and are standard at the multi-specialty Allina healthcare clinic I use. It wouldn't be prudent for a new healthcare company to move here. The competition is too tough. Right now, there's a lot of surplus capacity in the total system.

In the Great Depression the movement of people was caused by the economic collapse. Here it would be the other way around.

I've suspected for a few years that some Republican state governments have been doing as much as they can to encourage their poorer residents to pack up and move to a more hospitable state. They refuse to expand Medicaid, harass them with drug testing, shut down abortion providers (wealthy women can still get on an airplane and fly somewhere else to have an abortion), etc. If the poor move elsewhere that will enable more tax cuts and presumably attract more wealthy sociopaths like themselves who don't want to pay taxes.



Plus I think the GOP Deathcare gives the states more control over health insurance so that would be another tool they can use to make life miserable for the less-than-wealthy in their emigration campaign.

I moved from FL to VT (just bought a house a few weeks ago).

I did it to ensure that I'd have adequate healthcare. If VT proves unable to do this, I'll cross the border to Massachusetts and buy a home there.

But keep in mind - I'm able to do this because I have some money at my disposal. When we were poor, which was just a short time ago (I mean really poor - food insecure poor) - we couldn't have moved. It was too hard.

Most of the poor in FL (in those small towns that no one ever visits) will stay right where they are because that is where they are from. Their parents, grandparents and children are from there and 'stay' there. The really, really poor of this county will stay in their red states and do what Faulkner would have called 'endure.' They will accept this as another kick in the teeth from a power that they can neither control nor influence.

homeless and poor people to NY and Chicago.

Housing prices are thru the roof and non-profit organizations are helping the homeless and underemployed move to less expensive states (Wyo, Neb) so they can afford to live.

Great place for those who love the outdoors and have a means of support. It would be so nice to have two democratic senators and a representative from Wyoming.

The Libertarian Party are already trying to convince libertarians to move in to small population states and turn them Libertarian.

I am glad it is the non-profits that are helping homeless in Colorado move to where they can afford to live.

In the old days in the south it was done by the power structure to avoid paying welfare.

all Trump supporters remain behind to wallow in their own self-inflicted misery.

We don't want them flooding our blue states. They are not welcome.

It's impossible.

We can't keep them from moving, but I doubt most of them can afford it. Sounds elitist, yes, but it's the truth.

Besides, what would they do to make a living? How would they afford housing?

Those States will still get two senators each

in the states with more generous healthcare programs and it will become a requirement to get coverage. There will be State ID cards that come about. If they can code a US passport card into a driver's license, they can code an elaborate State ID system into them. You then will get nada if you don't have one.

Residency in one of these states will become more prized than American citizenship itself.

...and stop turning this into a red-blue thing, folks. It is more of a Medicaid expansion versus non-expansion issue. Michigan and Ohio, for example, want to keep the ACA. They went "red" but are more common sense when it comes to health care.