A total of 759 rural U.S. hospitals are at risk of closure due to financial stress. 728 of them are in states that voted Republican in 2024. 188 rural hospitals have either closed or abandoned inpatient care.

Rural hospitals in states that will experience the largest reductions in Medicaid coverage are the most likely to fail.

So are rural hospitals that serve a large number of older adults due to aging populations and higher per-capita reliance on Medicaid.

In states that  don’t expand Medicaid its 53%. Hospital closures are more than twice as likely to occur in the Republican-controlled states that do not expand Medicaid. 

Although the Senate appropriated $50 billion in a “rural health fund” to help struggling hospitals, Trump appointee Dr. Oz who oversees Medicare and Medicaid” has wide discretion over how to allocate the $50 billion. It’s near certain his allocations will conform to Trump’s history of punishing Democratic states and favoring Republican states and will have little correlation with need.

Even if distributions were on the up and up, estimates are that the fund won’t be enough as the amount of aid to hospitals over five years is less than the $137 billion in lost healthcare revenues to rural healthcare systemsover ten years.

It may be hard to believe that an American President would let hospitals close and let people suffer and die. But we need to remember that Donald Trump cancelled  most of U.S. humanitarian aid abroad that prevented disease outbreaks while HIV and drug-resistant tuberculosis were now spreading unchecked in many countries reliant on USAID medications. 

I’ll leave MAGAs with one thought. I like to be wrong. If I’m never wrong, I’ll never learn anything. 

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The post 728 OUT OF 759 STRUGGLING RURAL HOSPITALS LIKELY TO CLOSE DUE TO GOP MEDICARE, MEDICAID CUTS AND HIGHER ACA PREMIUMS ARE IN  REPUBLICAN STATES  first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

The eight Democratic Senators settled for a promise that the Senate will vote on a bill to extend the subsidies by the end of the second week of December. The eight Senators are either stupid or must have been corrupted by our Chief Corrupter, President Trump. 

Republicans have had a 3 decades-long sinister plan , referred to as “Starve the Beast” to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. It includes Trump’s obscene tax cuts to knowingly increase our deficits and national debt and create shortfalls so the Republicans can throw up their hands and lament that they have no option but to cut America’s safety nets. 

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that Trump’s tax cuts will cut federal spending on Medicaid and CHIP by $1.02 trillion. Moreover, the Obamacare subsidies are set to expire at the end of the year  and are unlikely to be extended, especially given Trump’s mission to undo everything Obama accomplished. 

Democratic voters expected their party to fight for their healthcare with a zero-sum approach — to win-at-all-costs and rule out compromise. But the eight Senators who caved came up with a hollow reason to betray their constituents – a provision that federal employees would get back their jobs and their pay, which would have happened anyway. So, the eight defectors got nothing for risking Americans’ healthcare and lives. 

An NBC poll taken this March found that two-thirds of Democrats expected and wanted their party to “stick to their positions even if it means not getting things done  in Washington.” Their surrender drew anger and outrage from many of their Democratic colleagues who said the party should have held firm. And for base Democrats, this wasn’t simply a compromise, it was a complete and total misread of the political situation. Many thought that Most Voters believed that Democrats gave up their leverage to insist on the Obamacare subsidies. Voters largely blamed the shutdown on Trump and the GOP and scoring huge wins in states like New Jersey, Virginia and Georgia in off-year elections signaled the beginning of a trend. Does the phrase “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” come to mind?

The post DEMOCRATIC VOTERS EXPECTED THEIR PARTY TO FIGHT FOR THEIR HEALTHCARE. THEY WERE DISAPPOINTED  first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.