This story first appeared at ProPublica and The Frontier. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
A very sad situation, but will it have an effect on how they vote this November?
Multiply this for Red State treatment venue localities and MAGA is in for some Trouble in River City.
T which stands for Trump, which rhymes with Fool.
I don’t foresee a good outcome for this hospital. The few nurses left are brave souls.
This story is the story of health in rural areas across the country. This is scary for people who live in small towns or on farms. If they have an accident or heart attack they are taken to the nearest hospital. Hopefully it is in a nearby town. Those small local facilities are often little more than an ER with a few attached hospital beds (like this one.) Once a patient is stabilized he or she is shipped to the regional hospital that might be a 2 hour ambulance ride away. Thirty minutes if by helicopter. Lots and lots of small rural hospitals have shut down making travel to the nearest longer and longer.
This crisis is particularly bad in states like Oklahoma that didn’t expand medicaid. Republican racism has consequences. In this case shitting on poor blacks and browns means rural whites also suffer and die needlessly.
This trend also means it is harder and harder for folks wanting to promote rural communities. Nobody wants to buy real estate where you can’t get treated if you fall off a ladder or go into labor.
“Brent King, a bankruptcy trustee who in 2019 oversaw the successful sale of another former EmpowerHMS hospital in Hillsboro, Kansas, said it’s a challenge to find buyers even without the threat of an ongoing global pandemic.”
Hillsboro at one time had two doctors, who both left recently, presumably due to the mismanagement of EmpowerHMS. The hospital is a new facility but they don’t yet have a fulltime doctor. The GOP-controlled legislature refuses to expand Medicaid, which would provide a lifeline to many of these small hospitals on the verge of closing.
Also these ambulance rides and especially the helicopter lifts are crushingly expensive.
You are correct. This is a story- repeated in rural areas across the country…even is Blue-State California. My little rural county had a “Community” hospital shutter, file for bankruptcy and the closest Hospital was approx 30 miles away. The Er was first closed and then its 32 employees went unpaid (2013). Finally another Hospital Conglomerate took it over. Of course- they are entirely Farming economy with extreme poverty.
My solution is the obvious one, and the one that probably won’t happen.
A Federal Rural Public Health Hospital System. Small Hospitals, owned and operated by the Federal Government, with all staff, MDs, RNs, PAs, food services and janitors being Federal Employees. Instead of NHS call it RHS.
It is what a civilized society would do.
Instead, people will die.
So WHERE are all the “Liberal” billionaires in all this?
Micheal Bloomberg could purchase 10 hospitals and fund them for several years with the money he WASTED on his “not-really-a-campaign” to undercut Elisabeth Warren (which worked.)
Were is Warren Buffet? Bill Gates? Stever? Yang? all the rest of the Silicon Valley Billionaires?
It shows the difference between the Fascist Billionaires (DeVoss, Thiel, Schwartzman, Perlmutter, etc.) and the “Liberal” ones. The Fascist ones put their Money where their Fascism is.
Time to “put your money where your LIBERALISM IS.”
(At the very least they should consider doing this just as a tax right-off of the losses they will incur.)
“I have to believe we have a future here…”
Not if Trump is reelected you don’t.
Not as expensive as maintaining a full line hospital ever 25 miles. I have been following this issue closely for years. The model of a community hospital consisting of an ER with a 20-25 bed ward in every good sized small town feeding regional full service hospitals makes a lot of sense. The problems, however, are numerous, and start with the lack of health insurance. Most farmers and a lot of residents of rural communities go insurance bare. Many rural people work minimum wage jobs without insurance. Twenty years ago my in laws retired to a rural community. Their only income was social security. They were among the richest people around. When a state refuses to expand medicare it dooms its rural communities. Little known fact, Obamacare assumed every state would expand medicare so it cut spending that otherwise went to shore up rural health because it was going to be duplicated. The dumbass Republicans never caught on (actually they did, rural hospital executives screamed bloody murder.) This slow motion shit show has been going on across the country since.
By the way you won’t hear this on talk radio or read it in local small town newspapers or local action news, because the Republicans running local media and talk radio don’t want rural people to know just how badly treated they are being served.
Here at Red State Health, we’re passing the savings on to YOU.
Where are the Voters who are, presumably, affected by the stupid policies of the Republicans they elected?
Most rural people have no idea this is going on or if they do they think it is the cold hand of capitalism. In most rural communities the local press is owned by the local Republican leadership who control the population through a vile combination of race baiting and pro-life Supply Side Jesus mumbo jumbo. That is a lot easier than actually confronting local problems and promoting reasonable solutions. All the while they are taking resources out the backdoor.
I have long thought there is an opening for the Democratic party in rural America if they would just seize it. That is what makes me so angry about he current red state blue state split. It is arbitrary and a lot of rural red state people don’t have a Democratic choice or an opportunity to challenge their local leadership.
I am glad to see this ProPublica Article here on TPM. Thank you, TPM!
This has been going on for a long time, and I hope a new Administration will actually explore a vast remodel of the hospital issue in the country, instead of just throwing it over to CMS and Seema Verma. It’s time.
Enjoying their low taxes. Four-wheelers aren’t cheap, you know.
“Many of the hospitals experienced financial problems after insurance companies flagged ballooning laboratory costs as fraud”
Ahhhh yes, I remember the good old days (1976) when 2 drops of blood was a type and cross from the blood bank. But then they didn’t charge for Kleenex back then either.
Screw that!!! Let one of the Conservative billionaires come to their rescue. I am sick to shyt of these f*cking moron conservatives cutting their own throats because of the threat from whatever Liberal boogeyman they think is coming to a town near them. Nope, got no sympathy whatsoever.
Oh, and @ronbyers
Most rural people have no idea this is going on or if they do they think it is the cold hand of capitalism.
If they do think it’s going on at the very least, they’re owning the libs. Own away, guys. But try to find an ICU first.