Pemiscot County, Missouri, misplaced its Walmart. Now it might lose its solely hospital.
This deeply conservative nook of rural America is getting a front-row training in what it means when Republicans say they need to “run authorities like a enterprise.”
Companies exist to earn money. They usually don’t waste their time in poverty-stricken Pemiscot County, dwelling to lower than 16,000 residents who’ve a median family earnings that barely clears $40,000. It’s Missouri’s poorest county. Why would any profit-driven, efficiency-minded system waste a dime right here?
The Guardian paints a grim image: “Three tales of brown brick simply off Interstate 55 within the city of Hayti, the 115-bed hospital has saved its doorways open even after the county’s solely Walmart closed, the ranks of boarded-up fuel stations alongside the freeway exit grew, and the inhabitants of the encompassing cities dwindled, thanks in no small half to the destruction finished by tornadoes.”
That is a type of rural counties I’ve written about: depending on the federal authorities they hate.
Now, due to President Donald Trump and his Medicaid-gutting funds legislation, Pemiscot Memorial Hospital is hanging by a thread.
“If Medicaid drops, are we going to be even accumulating what we’re accumulating now?” Jonna Inexperienced, the chair of the hospital’s board, requested The Guardian. With roughly 80% of the hospital’s income coming from Medicaid and Medicare, any cuts to a hospital already on the sting of insolvency is a demise sentence. “We want some hope,” she added.
She doesn’t want hope. She and her neighbors must cease voting for Republicans.
Trump received 74% of the vote within the county final yr. Jason Smith, their Republican congressman, did even higher, successful with 76% of the vote. And Smith was thrilled to assist the legislation that might shutter this hospital, saying in a press release, “The One, Huge, Stunning Invoice is nothing in need of the best piece of working-class tax reduction in a technology. President Trump didn’t simply signal a invoice into legislation—he unleashed America’s Golden Age.”
Certain. If “Golden Age” means no hospital.
Republican Sen. Josh Hawley received 73% of the county. He had warned that Trump’s tax invoice would devastate rural hospitals—after which he voted for it anyway.
Nevertheless, simply days after that vote, he tried to reverse course, introducing a invoice to “defend” the identical rural-hospital funding he had simply voted to intestine.
“I’m utterly against slicing rural hospitals interval,” Hawley advised NBC Information. “I haven’t modified my view on that one iota.”
Besides … he already had.
Final week at an Axios discussion board, Hawley doubled down, warning in opposition to “experiment[ing]” with the “vitally necessary” federal funding that retains rural hospitals afloat.
However when it mattered—when it got here time to vote on a significant invoice—he selected as a substitute to chop wealthy folks’s taxes. He had a selection between Missouri hospitals and billionaire handouts, and he picked the billionaires.
And right here’s the kicker: that “vitally necessary” funding he says he desires to guard? It doesn’t even come from Missouri. Missouri is a moocher state, propped up by federal {dollars} primarily from blue states like California, Illinois, and New York. Hawley’s constituents hate the federal authorities, however they positive love its cash.
As for Pemiscot County, they wished a smaller authorities to chop waste, fraud, and abuse. In actual fact, many voices quoted in that Guardian story insisted what Republicans did was okay as a result of they knew that one man. Not even kidding—try this passage:
“We acquired a man round right here, I suppose he’s nonetheless round. He’s legally blind however he goes deer searching yearly,” Baughn Merideth, a county commissioner, advised The Guardian. “There’s simply a lot fraud … it seems like we’re proper in the midst of it.”
So this one “man” in Pemiscot County—if he’s “nonetheless round”—is so filled with fraud that it’s acceptable for the county to lose its solely hospital. (Additionally, “legally blind” doesn’t imply can’t-see-anything blind. In actual fact, Iowa’s Division for the Blind says that solely about 18% of legally blind individuals are completely blind.)
Trump supporters will bend themselves into knots to keep away from blaming these enabling the crises they face.
No matter fraud could exist in Pemiscot County, it pales compared to the waste of sustaining a vital medical facility in a county the place the inhabitants has plunged from practically 47,000 within the Nineteen Forties to underneath 16,000 at present. When the hospital closes, extra folks will depart. The world’s demise spiral will speed up.
“That is our dwelling, born and raised, and you’d by no means need to depart it. However I’ve a nine-year-old with cardiac issues. I might not really feel protected dwelling right here with out a hospital that I may take her to know if one thing occurred,” Brittany Osborne, Pemiscot Memorial’s interim CEO, advised The Guardian.
In the meantime, Inexperienced—the hospital board chair anxious about cuts—follows a Fb group that not too long ago posted a meme of Trump with the caption “Isn’t it nice having an actual president once more?”
She says she wants “some hope”?
Arduous to think about a worse place to go on the lookout for it.
