Weeds have punctured through the vacant parking lot of Martin General Hospital’s emergency room. A makeshift blue tarp covering the hospital’s sign is worn down from flapping in the wind. The hospital doors are locked, many in this county of 22,000 fear permanently.
Some residents worry the hospital’s sudden closure last August could cost them their life.
“I know we all have to die, but it seems like since the hospital closed, there’s a lot more people dying,” Linda Gibson, a lifelong resident of Williamston, North Carolina, said on a recent afternoon while preparing snacks for children in a nearby elementary school kitchen.
More than 100 hospitals have downsized services or closed altogether over the past decade in rural communities like Williamston, where people openly wonder if they’d survive the 25-minute ambulance ride to the nearest hospital if they were in a serious car crash.
Corporations should not be running hospitals with shareholder profit as the primary goal. Hospitals should be owned and run by the communities, or more likely the state, with the goal of providing the best reasonable level of care.
Medical care should not be for profit.
Medical care, Pharmacy, Schools, Daycare, Elder care, End of life care, prisons.
These things should not generate revenue with the target of making rich people richer.
I’d suggest we add Insurance to the list, but I guess if the things you listed weren’t for profit, we might not NEED insurance.
Insurance is an interesting case. You’re paying into a loan you might never take out in case an unlikely event happens. The entire reason the companies stay in business is because people never take the money out.
Instead of “insurance”, make it work like a mandatory 401k. You have to pay into it, it’s yours for retirement, but you can draw against it. Qualifying life events happen you can draw against it up to a point. you can pay it back down.
Quorum Health shut down Martin County’s 43-bed hospital, citing “financial challenges related to declining population and utilization trends,”
We’ll make more money if we let you die.
Yes profit is killing our medical system
Yes profit is killing
our medical system
No hospital should be run for profit, period.
I would note, this is not just a problem for rural red states.
The only hospital in my home town of Eugene, Oregon has closed. It sat just a few blocks from the University of Oregon campus.
People in need of emergency services need to drive miles to the neighboring town of Springfield, 6 miles away, or Cottage Grove, 23 miles.
https://apnews.com/article/eugene-oregon-hospital-closure-a983f5ad1923a7e40e07583fc910cf0b
spoiler
sdfsaf
Yep, and after looking into this a little, affinity health providers is the culprit. They bought the hospital in 2021. ‘Streamlining’ is one of their key phrases on their website.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
When Quorum Health shut down Martin County’s 43-bed hospital, citing “financial challenges related to declining population and utilization trends,” residents here didn’t just lose a sense of security.
People like 73-year-old Bobby Woolard say they don’t believe any politicians – from the local county commissioners to the presidential candidates who will pass through this swing state with big campaign promises in the coming months – care enough to help them fix the problem.
The sentiment in this sharply polarized and segregated eastern North Carolina county could hint at trouble for President Joe Biden, who has made health care a key part of his reelection campaign against Republican rival Donald Trump.
And in North Carolina, the campaign is narrowly focused on promoting Democrats’ successful efforts to expand Medicaid, which will extend nearly-free government health insurance to thousands of people and reduce the indigent population for hospitals.
“Health care is on the ballot this year, and voters will remember that when they reject Donald Trump in November,” said Dory MacMillan, the Biden campaign’s North Carolina communications director.
But with that money spent, hospital closures might tick up again, said George Pink, the deputy director of the University of North Carolina’s Sheps Center’s Rural Health Research Program.
The original article contains 1,487 words, the summary contains 204 words. Saved 86%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
