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ObamaCare is Killing People in Rural America
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On November 13, 2014 @ 11:32 am In The Point | 35 Comments
Gotta get rid of those bitter clingers somehow. Who needs death panels, when you can just eliminate hospitals. Next time a liberal tells you that ObamaCare makes medical care more affordable, ask him how anyone is supposed to afford it when they can’t even reach it.
Stewart-Webster Hospital had only 25 beds when it still treated patients. The rural hospital served this small town of 1,400 residents and those in the surrounding farms and crossroads for more than six decades.
But since the hospital closed in the spring of last year, many of those in need have to travel up to 40 miles to other hospitals. That’s roughly the same distance it takes to get from Times Square to Greenwich, Conn., or from the White House to Baltimore, or from downtown San Francisco to San Jose.
Since the beginning of 2010, 43 rural hospitals — with a total of more than 1,500 beds — have closed, according to data from the North Carolina Rural Health Research Program. The pace of closures has quickened: from 3 in 2010 to 13 in 2013, and 12 already this year. Georgia alone has lost five rural hospitals since 2012, and at least six more are teetering on the brink of collapse. Each of the state’s closed hospitals served about 10,000 people — a lot for remaining area hospitals to absorb.
What’s behind it? It begins with an O and ends with an A.
Critics say the ACA is also accelerating the demise of rural outposts that cater to many of society’s most vulnerable. These hospitals treat some of the sickest and poorest patients — those least aware of how to stay healthy. Hospital officials contend that the law’s penalties for having to re-admit patients soon after they’re released are impossible to avoid and create a crushing burden.
“The stand-alone, community hospital is going the way of the dinosaur,” says Angela Mattie, chairwoman of the health care management and organizational leadership department at Connecticut’s Quinnipiac University, known for its public opinion surveys on issues including public health.
And that just happens to benefit some of the big health corps that supported ObamaCare. One of those little corrupt coincidences.
There’s a “golden hour” after heart attacks, trauma and stroke in which treatment is needed to prevent loss of heart muscle and brain tissue, says Janis Orlowski, chief medical officer for the Association of American Medical Colleges.
With just two ambulances, which are often tied up making the average 90-mile round trip to the nearest hospital, “We’re pretty much shot around here with the golden hour,” says Ed Lynch, Stewart County’s director of emergency medical services.
That’s how you kill people while promising that you’re helping them.
Peanut and cotton farmer Buren “Bill” Jones, 52, died of a heart attack a month after Stewart-Webster closed. His family had to wait about 15 minutes for an ambulance to take him to a hospital 22 miles away, where doctors couldn’t revive him. The closed hospital was 9 miles from his house, a distance his wife or daughter — who performed CPR on him at home — might have driven.
Another dead white man who won’t be voting anymore. Mission accomplished.
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