Public health disaster: Shuttered hospitals fuel Covid deaths, anti-vax conspiracies

[Nevilledog]

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Tweet text:

Taylor Lorenz
@TaylorLorenz
The South’s health care system is crumbling under Covid-19. Rural areas are suffering disproportionately amid the pandemic as the worst public health crisis in a century continues to escalate

politico.com
Public health disaster: Shuttered hospitals fuel Covid deaths, anti-vax conspiracies
A POLITICO analysis shows about half of the counties — all rural — with the highest per-capita deaths are within 40 miles of a hospital that closed.
1:24 PM · Mar 25, 2022

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/19/covid-closed-rural-hospitals-tennessee-deaths-anti-vax-conspiracies-00018204

By the time Covid-19 hit Haywood County, it was too late to prepare.

The rural county in the Tennessee delta, near the Mississippi River, had its health care system ground down in the years leading up to the pandemic: Ever since the 84-year-old Haywood County Community Hospital closed its doors in 2014, the numbers of doctors and other health care professionals dwindled. Residents who once were on a first-name basis with their care professionals were left to book appointments at facilities miles from where they’d raised their families and grown older.

Haywood County — with its flat land and fertile soil, generations of proud farmers but low per capita income of about $22,000 — is something of a poster child for rural America. It’s also a prime example of the decline of rural health care — and how rural areas are suffering disproportionately in the worst public health crisis in a century.

Some of the biggest disparities in the Covid-19 crisis aren’t just among red states and blue states, or Black, white and Latino populations; they’re between rural and urban communities.

Kyle Kopec, the director of government affairs for local health care company Braden Health, looks at an old photo of the Haywood County Community Hospital he found in a storage shed. The hospital had been gradually shrinking for years before closing completely in 2014.

Of the 50 counties with the highest Covid deaths per capita, 24 are within 40 miles of a hospital that has closed, according to a POLITICO analysis in late January. Nearly all 50 counties were in rural areas. Rural hospital closures have been accelerating, with 181 since 2005 — and over half of those happening since 2015, according to data from the University of North Carolina. But that may be just the beginning. Over 450 rural hospitals are at risk of closure, according to an analysis by the Chartis Group, one of the nation’s largest independent health care advisory firms.

*snip*

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

1. If only the residents in the area could afford Covid vaccinations.

Oh, wait, they're FREE!.

Get the shots, don't die. Easy.

[leftstreet]

3. Wait. If people vaxxed, hospitals wouldn't close?

The for-profit medical industry is about...making profits. They were consolidating and closing hospitals long before covid appeared

[Effete Snob]

4. "Of the 50 counties with the highest Covid deaths per capita"

Now, hold that thought a sec.

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People in counties that voted for Donald Trump are nearly three times more likely to die from Covid-19 than those who live in counties that voted for Joe Biden, according to a new study by National Public Radio.

NPR examined deaths per 100,000 people in about 3,000 counties across the US since May 2021. According to NPR, 1 May was chosen as the start date as it is roughly the time when vaccines became universally available to adults.

The study found that areas that voted for Trump by at least 60% in November 2020 had death rates 2.7 times higher than counties that voted heavily for Biden.
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Turns out, this is the result the majority of them wanted. No government interference in health care.

Who are you to question Democracy itself?

They voted not to have hospitals and, by golly, they got it.

[leftstreet]

5. LOL people get to vote on closing hospitals?

[Effete Snob]

6. Yes they do

Have you looked at who they vote for in Tennessee?


They vote against having health insurance too.



https://www.healthinsurance.org/medicaid/tennessee/

Tennessee has not expanded Medicaid coverage (which is called TennCare) as allowed under the Affordable Care Act, which means that there are an estimated 118,000 residents in the coverage gap — ineligible for Medicaid and also ineligible for premium subsidies in the exchange. This group is comprised of non-disabled adults with income below the poverty level and without minor children.

If the state were to expand Medicaid, at least 330,000 people would gain access to coverage.

But Medicaid expansion in Tennessee has been a non-starter for most Republican lawmakers, and the GOP holds a strong majority in both chambers of the state’s legislature.

They like for-profit medicine and they don't fucking want insurance.

Now, you tell me why the hospitals can't stay open, and explain how that has nothing to do with how they vote. Go ahead.

[leftstreet]

7. LOL n/t

[gratuitous]

2. I'd like to see this as required reading in certain circles

Those circles being where politicians try to practice medicine and, sitting in their lofty offices, deny women health care, because it ain't no thang for someone to travel hundreds of miles or several hours to a clinic that will serve them. I'd also like to see judges - all the way up to the Supreme Court - who interpret the law and say that such travel is just not a hurdle or a problem for someone seeking treatment.

None of these people will ever live in Haywood County, so it's nothing they need concern themselves with.

[crickets]

8. K&R for visibility.