You cannot overregulate some things. Hospital safety is one of them. Food safety is another. They are both under fire from Trump. Doctors cry about malpractice. The people they harmed do not.It's a story that has far more to do with the cost of medical providers, equipment, and certification of facilities.
High quality residential / commercial 15 amp receptacle: About $2.00
Same 15 amp receptacle in "hospital" grade: $15.00
That's one tiny detail in building a medical facility. Everything costs 5 to 10 times more to do. The floors have to be hermetically sealed meaning terrazzo or another impervious finish. Everything costs so much more due to government regulations.
Training personnel costs ungodly amounts. For someone to be qualified to draw blood requires an associate's degree now in phlebology. Medical provider insurance is another massive cost due to the propensity for people to file malpractice suits for the slightest of reasons and the availability of lots of lawyers who seek settlements and make a living out of that area of law.
So, some medical facility in the Middle-of-Nowhere (Curtis NE--look at Google Maps) that serves a relative handful of people simply cannot be sustained or justified for the millions it costs to stay open. That's just how it is, and a lot of that has to do with onerous government regulation of the healthcare industry.
Rural MAGA town loses only medical center
- Thread starter Maze
- Start date
T. A. Gardner
Serial Thread Killer
You can overregulate anything. If you make something so safe it becomes unaffordable, but it is a necessity of life, the result is a decline in the quality of life.
What's hurting smaller self supporting hospitals is one, larger competitors are buying into mergers, and two, upgrading to modern equipment is so expensive.
T. A. Gardner
Serial Thread Killer
In many cases, it's simply the smaller ones can't run at anything close to a profit. The one in question here in Nebraska, is out in the proverbial Middle-of-Nowhere. Look that town up on Google Maps. Let's say it services 2000 people locally and in surrounding small towns. On a 200-day work year it sees roughly 10 patients (non-emergency) a day. That is nothing. How can it keep running, keep the sort of supplies a low-end hospital needs, or even manage staffing when the staff has to be paid close to $100,000 a year per person on average?
It can't. It simply doesn't have the customer base to run at even close to a profit. Medicaid doesn't fix that. There are no payouts to be made that will fix it.
Yet, the Left thinks this medical center should continue to run on altruism. That is, it should run out of the goodness of humanity even as its staff starve due to lack of customers, its bills go unpaid. This is the sort of bullshit the Left is infamous for.
It wasn't the quality of care that contributed to smaller hospital closures. Some of them were bought out by large corporations and they expanded their coverage into networks. Some were left on their own for survival.
T. A. Gardner
Serial Thread Killer
Even bigger networks aren't going to keep a perpetual money loser open forever. Curtis is about 30-ish miles from open medical centers in other towns. While this involves a drive it isn't excessive requiring maybe a 30-minute drive or so to get there (most of the roads to do so are posted 65 mph).
I drive to medical center because I'm in a insurance plan network and the local smaller hospital wasn't. It closed, because it as you said, didn't have the clientele and the equipment was outdated.
So you deadbeats have the county raise your taxes and pay for one.
Look up what the term 'rural' means. You gimps think you're entitled to a having a major hospital every two blocks or something?
In other news, it is usually the local fire depts. whose show up first in most small towns and villages in emergencies, also police, and they usually have subsidies to provide EMTS with equipment and training, and most cities have Careflight choppers that get scrambled to the more serious emergencies. they fly around 125-160 mph.
You want to live in the country, expect inconveniences, Duh.