Small-town hospital closings leave rural Texans far from medical care

[TexasTowelie]

Two years ago, Dannie Bee Tiffin was working in the tiny town of Guthrie when he started experiencing chest pains.

Unfortunately for Tiffin, he was in King County, population 282, the second least-populated county in Texas and third-least populated in the United States.

There was no doctor in Guthrie. No clinic. Childress Regional Medical Center was 60 miles away. Between Guthrie and Childress was Paducah, where the hospital closed in 1985.

So Tiffin, 62, an electrician for the famed Four Sixes Ranch, was loaded into an ambulance for the ride north.

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/news/state/article116987298.html

[Vogon_Glory]

1. The Innate Contradiction of Trumpkin Governance

There's going to be more hollowing-out of red rural counties as the innate contradictions of Trumpkin government sucks the life out of rural Republican counties. Cut, cut, cut. Close hospitals, close schools, close post offices, close USDA offices, close all the things that keep these places viable for shirt-sleeve Americans, and never mind if they're lily-white and have been chugging right-wing Kool-aid since Dick Nixon started the Southern Strategy.

The folks out there are voting for state, local, and federal pols all too happy to cut the economic viability of their communities.

[WhiteTara]

2. And yet the good folks in West Texas continue

to vote against their own best interests.

I'm also surprised there isn't an air ambulance service there.

[Vogon_Glory]

3. Go figure

I haven't figured out why rural Texans still vote for the Republicans, especially out in west Texas. I have several incomplete explanations--lack of Democratic Party infrastructure out there, failure to think about and vote FOR their economic interests, deference to right-wing BS artists as intellectual authorities instead of using their brains--but I've got NO idea as to how to get through to them.

Things will change. Bannion/Spencer white racism isn't going to play so well out there before too long. Those areas were majority white when I was a kid 50+ years ago. They're a lot browner now, even if I think they're politically comatose. But start kicking them for their skin color, and the Trumpkin white nationalists are fool enough to do it, and it can become a whole new ball game, especially as more Latinos out there turn 18 and over.