Rural Hospitals Failing in States that Declined Obamacare

Meanwhile as Trump fills the news with none stop corruption and hate, Republican policies are leading to the shuttering of rural hospitals across the United States. And if the Republican lawsuit to kill the ACA succeeds, the wave will become a deadly tsunami.

More than half of all rural hospitals in Mississippi, South Carolina, Georgia and Oklahoma lost money from 2011 through 2017. 

In Kansas, the bloodletting was even more widespread.  Two out of three rural hospitals in the state operated in the red during the seven year period. Five were forced to shut down.

The nation’s current system of rural hospitals dates back to the 1940s and the belief that every town deserves a modern facility....residents of deep red rural America  — farmers and farm workers, small business owners and their employees, the old and infirm — are seeing their hospitals founder and close.

What these states also have in common is that legislators voted against expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which would have provided coverage for hundreds of thousands of uninsured residents and bolstered rural hospital bottom lines.

“The irony to me,” said John Henderson, who heads The Texas Organization of Rural & Community Hospitals and supports Medicaid expansion, “is that we’re paying federal income taxes to expand coverage in other states. We’re exporting our coverage and leaving billions of dollars on the table.”

The crisis facing rural America has been raging for decades and the carnage is not expected to end any time soon.   

While experts agree embracing Obamacare is not a cure-all for rural hospitals and would not have saved many of those that closed, few believe it was wise to turn the money down.

High rates of poverty in rural areas, combined with the loss of jobs, aging populations, lack of health insurance and competition from other struggling institutions will make it difficult for some rural hospitals to survive....

Without a hospital, it also becomes difficult to attract new businesses to an area and keep others from leaving

“A hospital closure is a frightening thing for a small town,” said Patti Davis, president of the Oklahoma Hospital Association. “It places lives in jeopardy and has a domino effect on the community. Health care professionals leave, pharmacies can’t stay open, nursing homes have to close and residents are forced to rely on ambulances to take them to the next closest facility in their most vulnerable hours.”

Source: http://gatehousenews.com/ruralhospitals/financialtroubles/