A Data Visualization Newsletter

Last week, we helped Health Care Cost Institute release a revamped version of its Healthy Marketplace Index for 2020. It examines trends in health care spending, prices, and use across 124 U.S. metros. Bottom line? Health care spending has increased in almost every major U.S. metro since 2013, outpacing inflation by nearly 3x.

New research from the Rhodium Group suggests that climate change could profoundly shift where people live and farm in the United States. Traditionally hospitable areas, like much of the Southeast and California coast, may become too hot and dry for the type of climate humans have historically lived in. This project from ProPublica shows how your county could be affected.

Distant communities have started to feel the effects of the West Coast’s raging wildfires. Last week, skies in Washington D.C. and New York were notably smoky, with pollutants reaching as far as Britain. This piece from Reuters shows how the smoke has been able to cover such a startlingly distance, traveling halfway across the world and reaching altitudes previously unseen.

As we approach November, states across the U.S. are still trying to prepare for an election in the age of coronavirus. The New York Times looked at seven different dimensions of each state’s voting protocol to see if they’re ready, including whether online registration has become easier, whether their voting machines are vulnerable to hacking, and vote-by-mail rules. It paints a disconcerting picture.

The number of mail-in votes for the upcoming election is expected to rise significantly in America, mostly due to the ongoing pandemic. That shift could turn this year’s Election Night into an Election Week. Mail-in votes take much longer to tally than in-person voting, and already caused significant delays in deciding the winners of this year’s primaries.