Where There is No Doctor
When my wife and I enlisted in the Peace Corps and went overseas, our government sent us to a place where there was no medical clinic, no hospital. There were no health care facilities in the nearest village either, or in the next closest, or the one after that. We were given a medical survival manual and a first aid kit.
I followed the manual’s instructions to nurse boils from regular staph infections, treat malaria symptoms and weather periodic bouts of dysentery. For two years, I practiced medicine in a manner of speaking, knowing I was young and healthy and it would only be two years after all. Never did I imagine that even the largest communities in the area where I spent much of my childhood would be losing their hospitals three and a half decades later.
You might have heard that rural hospitals are closing all across the U.S., and they’re also closing in fair-size communities that aren’t exactly rural, places like Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls. This growing crisis brings Trump supporters to mind. You see, where I’m from, Democrats often got elected when I was young, but not anymore. It’s Trump country now.
Having been in positions that put me in conversation with literally hundreds if not thousands of Trump voters, I can say this about them: No two are alike.
Some are poor, others quite rich. Some live in cities, others in suburbs or small towns. They have similarities, but easily as many differences. One thing I’ve found striking is how many different doorways people pass through to get to Trump. A wide variety of motivations—sometimes related, other times seemingly incompatible—bring them to the doorstep. Once inside, though, nearly all of them show unmistakable signs of internalizing the full complement of gripes, grievances, animosities and aims.
Reflecting on the countless conversations, I can say this: No two go the same. Some are short, others prolonged. Some are cordial, others contentious. Some end poorly, others more or less agreeably. Common themes emerge, for sure. Wariness or outright resentment of immigrants, misdirected indignation if you ask me. Insistence that America is a republic and not a democracy, a distinction without a difference if there ever was one.
Talking with Trump voters, frustration with the economy and discomfort with the changing nature of society frequently bubbles to the surface. Depleted faith in government comes up repeatedly, as does fear of and opposition to socialism, despite its illustrious history here in Wisconsin.
Hospitals are closing left and right because of capitalism’s failings, not socialism’s influence. Free markets in the health care industry are plagued with chronic workforce shortages. Despite countless mergers aimed at producing economies of scale, half of rural hospitals are losing money. The communities served by those failing hospitals are at the mercy of market forces. No profit, no care. If you fall suddenly and seriously ill enough to need hospitalization, tough luck.
More than two dozen federal measures aimed at rescuing rural hospitals have been put forward, but a dysfunctional Congress—the least productive in nearly a century—is not acting on any of them. Emergency state funding to prevent rural hospital closures here in Wisconsin is being held up by partisan wrangling.
Trumpers at the federal and state levels are leading efforts to stall any government response to the rural hospital crisis, no doubt because relentless propaganda has imbued them with fear and loathing of socialism. They can’t see that socialism is to a free-market economy what yeast is to bread. Without a modest measure of it, capitalism’s excesses leave us with an economy that is like unleavened dough. It will not rise.
Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls and any number of communities throughout the country that are getting flattened sure could use a dash of socialism right about now.