Rural hospitals across the country have been closing due to financial issues. According to UNC’s Cecil G. Sheps Center, 79 such hospitals have closed since 2010, and that number has accelerated over the past couple of years. A big part of rural hospital business is tied up with our Medicaid system. The Medicaid system that Republicans propose to rob in order to give $800,000,000,000 to a bunch of rich people. Much has been written about how around half of the people born in the United States are covered under Medicaid. Tens of millions of people are projected to lose their healthcare coverage as Medicaid’s funding is sifted away and into swampy pockets. And as NPR writes, the rural hospital problem will not only get worse for rural inhabitants’ health, it’s will also be devastating to their local economies.
That is a problem for small rural hospitals like Pemiscot Memorial, which depend on Medicaid. The hospital serves an agricultural county that ranks worst in Missouri for most health indicators, including premature deaths, quality of life and even adult smoking rates. Closing the county's hospital could make those much worse.
And a rural hospital closure goes beyond people losing health care. Jobs, property values and even schools can suffer. Pemiscot County already has the state's highest unemployment rate. Losing the hospital would mean losing the county's largest employer.
"It would be devastating economically," Noble says. "Our annual payrolls are around $20 million a year."
That hospital in particular has already felt the greedy hands of Republican state legislation which cut the state’s Medicaid in 2005—a precursor of what will happen on a national level with the proposed Republican Trumpcare budget.
The report showed that changes in benefits and eligibility criteria enacted by Missouri in 2005 to deal with a $2.4 billion budget shortfall contributed to an increase of more than 100,000 in the number of uninsured Missourians. The cost-cutting changes also helped trigger a $162 million increase in the uncompensated care costs absorbed by hospitals. Those costs went from $429 million in 2004 to $591 million in 2006.
Medicaid-covered visits to hospital emergency departments fell by about 30,000, while the number of visits by uninsured persons increased by about 85,000. Also, safety-net clinics saw reduced Medicaid revenues, forcing them to seek an $8 million increase in state grants.
Also, the numbers of uninsured Missourians rose as well. I guess they didn’t realize how much “access” they had to healthcare?