"If People Aren't Careful, They're Going To Wake Up And There's Not Going To Be Rural Healthcare"

By Miss Kubelik

Here's an important story that the mainstream news media can't be bothered with covering (yet). But it's looming, and it's real, and it will have an impact on all our political futures. It's about how inaccessible healthcare is becoming in rural (read: Trumpy) areas of the country.

As Kaiser Health News reports: "Georgia’s Echols County, which borders Florida, could be called a healthcare desert.

"It has no hospital, no local ambulances. A medical provider comes to treat patients at a migrant farmworker clinic, but other than a small public health department with two full-time employees, that’s about the extent of the medical care in the rural county of 4,000 people.

"In an emergency, a patient must wait for an ambulance from Valdosta and be driven to a hospital there, or rely on a medical helicopter. Ambulances coming from Valdosta can take up to 20 minutes to arrive, said Bobby Walker, county commission chairman. 'That’s a pretty good wait for an ambulance,' he added."

Key facts not cited in the Kaiser coverage: Echols County gave 87 percent of its 2020 Presidential vote to Benedict Donald. It gave 88 percent of its 2018 gubernatorial vote to Brian Kemp over Stacey Abrams. Echols County is only 6 percent African-American. It's also worth noting that Georgia is one of 12 states that have not expanded their Medicaid programs under the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.

We don't understand why Republicans don't want to keep their voters alive and healthy to participate in future elections. But with all the gerrymandering and other voter-suppression machinations going on, their willingness to kill their own supporters may be the thing that saves American democracy. In the meantime, we cats HISS.