Martin County, nestled in northeast North Carolina, had 24,500 residents in 2010. By 2020, that quantity had dropped to 22,000. Like a lot of rural America, its inhabitants is steadily declining.
Politically, it’s adopted a well-known trajectory. President Barack Obama carried the county twice by 5 factors. In 2016, President Donald Trump edged out Hillary Clinton, 49.2% to 48.8%. And by 2020, Trump’s margin grew to 52% to President Joe Biden’s 47%. Final 12 months, he gained it by 55% to Vice President Kamala Harris’ 45%.
Now the county faces a really completely different sort of loss: its solely hospital shut down in August 2023 on account of monetary pressure, making the closest emergency room 22 miles away—a 30-minute drive that, for some, is deadly. It’s even farther for extra superior medical providers.
There have been plans to reopen the hospital, however then Trump’s proposed cuts to Medicaid—framed as a crackdown on “fraud and waste”—shattered that chance.
Based on The New York Occasions, the impacts are felt acutely by Martin County residents, greater than 1 / 4 of whom are older than 65. The closest hospital is in Greenville 40 minutes away.
Verna Marie Perry, 66, a former employee within the county’s grownup and growing old providers division, informed the Occasions that she now fields calls from pals in medical crises.
“Neighbors have referred to as me crying moments after somebody near them died whereas being transported to the closest hospital,” she mentioned.
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It’s a tragic actuality made worse by the truth that some residents nonetheless can’t—or gained’t—see the connection between their vote and the catastrophe now unfolding.
Cathy Worth, 72, a lifelong Williamston resident and former nurse on the shuttered Martin Basic, informed the Occasions that whereas she nonetheless backs Trump’s efforts to trim Medicaid, “we’re in a life-and-death disaster. Folks’s lives are on the road due to the hospital not being right here.”
There it’s: She voted to harm different individuals, not herself. And even now, she clings to the fantasy that each one of that “fraud and waste” have to be taking place some place else.
However the harsh actuality is that there’s nothing remotely environment friendly a couple of hospital serving simply 22,000 individuals. Rural hospitals aren’t worthwhile. They will solely exist due to subsidies from city areas—in impact, from liberals.
And for years, that was the deal: Blue America paid the payments so crimson America may have hospitals, colleges, broadband, and clear water. In return, rural voters have voted to burn the nation down.
Okay, then.
I really feel for the 45% of Martin County voters who backed Harris. They tried to do what was finest for his or her nation and their county. As for Worth and her fellow Trump voters?
I hope that they get precisely what they voted for.
