General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHow the Hospitals Serving Trump Voters Are Closing
By the time Copper Basin Medical Center launched a GoFundMe campaign in May last year, the hospital in the Appalachian foothills was buried in debt. It had been forced to suspend inpatient operations; many of its nurses and staffers had gone weeks without paychecks.
snip
Whats more, rural communities tend to be both poorer and sicker than their urban counterparts. According to US census data from 2016, 46 percent of the countrys rural population uses a form of government insurance, compared with 36 percent of the urban population. CDC data shows that rural areas have higher death rates from cancer, heart disease, unintentional injuries, chronic lower respiratory disease, and stroke than urban areas do. Infant mortality rates are roughly 20 percent higher in rural counties than they are in large urban counties.
snip
But theres another crisis linked to hospital closings: job losses. In many rural communities, the hospital is the largest employer. Brad Gibbens, a researcher at the University of North Dakota, estimates that when one shuts its doors, up to 25 percent of the surrounding regions economy disappears. A cascading shortage of physicians and other health care professionals soon follows.
snip
..... But the situation is significantly worse in the 17 states that have not joined Obamacares Medicaid expansion, most of them heavily rural. Those states have a higher rate of uninsured people, which means hospitalswhich cant turn anyone away from the emergency roomhave to provide more uncompensated care.
More at article:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/07/rural-hospital-closures-trump-republicans/
RhodeIslandOne
(5,042 posts)dalton99a
(81,073 posts)DFW
(54,057 posts)They actually believe what they hear. I know how this works. It's not new. I knew an old guy in Germany, liberal as could be. He was 10 years old when World War II ended, and he was in the Hitler Youth at the time. They all were. He said that for my (post-war) generation, it was impossible to imagine the brainwashing they were subjected to. He said that all kids his age believed that crap because they never heard anything else.
Fox Noise has now been around for ten years more than the Third Reich lasted. Consider the effect of THAT on people who watch it exclusively.
gratuitous
(82,849 posts)But then we'd be rushing to the socialist left, and we all know that's a one-way ticket to political palookaville. All the right people say so.
DFW
(54,057 posts)Obama and the "Libbruls," as always.
They would vote for Trump if he ordered all their first-born to face a firing squad. Fox Noise would convince them that their kids were too uppity anyway, and it will bring a welcome reduction in family expenses. This is how brainwashed these people are.
Johnny2X2X
(18,745 posts)I have a good friend who's a disabled vet, they have closed the med centers and hospitals near to him in rural Michigan, he doesn't use the VA. Getting to the doctor now takes him a 1-1/2 hour round trip drive, and they make him go more often to get his pain meds prescribed. When you're barely making it and extra hour and a half trip a month in your beat up old truck that's terrible on gas is a huge burden. They've cut his food stamps, they cut his medical, they cut everything and make him jump through more and more hoops to just get the bare minimum to survive. He's literally had to break hunting laws in order to get enough meat to survive the Winter.
Here's a fully disabled vet suffering from severe depression, diabetes, several crushed discs in his back, and terrible foot problems. He fought for his country. He spends no money on anything he's not supposed to, doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, his only vice is online videos games. This is a person we need to be able to take care of in America. It just gets worse for him and others like him every year. Hospitals near him closing is life changing. He budgets down to the penny every month and that extra gas and wear and tear on the vehicle to make the longer drive breaks him some months.