CARROLLTON, Ala. (AP) — As the coronavirus spread across the United States, workers at the lone hospital in one Alabama county turned off beeping monitors for good and padlocked the doors, making it one of the latest in a string of nearly 200 rural hospitals to close nationwide.
This pandemic continues to reveal the vast flaws in our national health “system.” Placing it all in the hands of private insurance companies and pharmaceutical giants? What could possible go wrong?? And thank FSM we don’t have any of that awful socialized medicine like they do in Canada, the UK and most of the rest of the civilized world. I do hope we are all able to survive this disaster and make some real changes before something like this happens again. I am not completely optimistic that it will happen, but we always have hope.
The reasons for the closures vary, but experts and administrators cite factors including declining rural populations, rising medical costs, insufficient Medicare reimbursements, large numbers of uninsured patients, state decisions against Medicaid expansion and mismanagement. About 60% of the counties and towns that have lost hospitals are in the South, an analysis by the Sheps Center showed.
Let’s not forget who made those decisions such as NO Medicaid expansion or who allowed big corporations to run amok with very high medical costs for decades…and yes, the South lost hospitals…should remind us of the Greed-Over-People Party has a stronghold of the South!
Why is it so easy for Covidiot-In-Chief and GOP to have tax cut for the rich and YUGE defense budget BUT decry healthcare for Americans because they say it is expensive?
This was all predictable and predicted. Now the rural areas in Red States are going to suffer for it.
Actions have consequences.
Red states hated the black man in the Oval Office so much they refused to expand Medicaid and they voted overwhelmingly for a racist President who continues to deny them health care.
And it does not matter to them because they’re so brainwashed they will continue to say that the black man took their health care away…Oh and they will trust in The Lawd to heal them…
And they will continue to blame Democrats for it.
Responsibility is for other people, not them.
bible-thumpers get trumped, take their lumps.
Did ya notice that they always have their hands out when the gov’t checks are being handed out?
chickens, meet roost
Wow…the general tone of this thread is appalling.
But it also confirms one of my fears about this thing. That once it plateaus in the big cities, everyone is going to turn their attention to other things, and leave rest of the nation to die.
Hey, Newsflash people…there are rural areas in New York and California too. In every “blue” state.
And even in red states…wtf is wrong with people gleefully applauding people dying in them, because the overall state didn’t vote for a Democrat??
…heaven forfend we should be like Iceland
Dear tea party,
This is the bed you made. Lie in it.
dont
Granted, these comments can reach into hyperbole, but IMHO no one is gleefully applauding.
As a rural resident of a very red county in a very blue state, I don’t have a problem with people who didn’t vote for a Democrat; I do have a problem with anyone who voted for Trump. I am surrounded by large scale farmers who will gleefully take every possible government subsidy, as long as it benefits them, often in the 6 figure range every year, but FSM forbid that they undertake any action to minimize their environmental impacts on wetlands, creeks, and rivers.
No one deserves to die, but I have far less sympathy to those who railed against Obamacare/Medicaid expansion, and voted in a pathological liar, who bears criminal responsibility for his inaction. Yet to this day, those voters still blindly follow the covidiot, think Jebus will save them, and disparage/ offset folks trying to take prudent actions to protect themselves and their families, and are in many cases, willfully exposing others to the virus.
Agreed. I understand and respect much of the justifiable anger. My lifes mission is to CRUSH every Republican everywhere. They’ve been noxious destructive force on our nation and the world for 40 years. But looking at people not as human, or not affording common human decency, common human solidarity in the universal suffering this pandemic brings… it is a mindset that can lead you to doing horrific inhumane things. Humans are humans. Many are detestable and deplorable, no doubt. But dehumanizing others is the slippery slope to bad, horrific outcomes. And it is doubly challenging seeing as Republicans are often dehumanizing others with their rhetoric like “real americans” and “real america” etc. We must have human empathy and solidarity.
This pandemic is a horror. Please, people, don’t lose your humanity in the process.
Call them tRump lumps.
Just perhaps this is a reason for an NHS in the rural areas of the country.
(And then expand as needed.)
It is difficult to feel any sympathy for people getting what they voted for.
Well…shit. Elections DO have consequences, it appears.
The closure of rural hospitals is one of the many things a democratic president and a democratic majority in congress would have addressed during the past three years. Historians will be merciless. I wish voters would be too.