I am a journalist, so I don’t wear a red or blue shirt. I try to use my writing to say, “Meet me in the middle,” and look at issues to see the impact on most people. As we advance to 2024 and beyond, I shall try to stick to my commitment to taking a centrist approach. Regardless of your party affiliation, now that voters have spoken, can we speak up and hold the powerful accountable for their words and deeds?
I had this column in mind when listening to a recent conference on the challenges of rural health care. So, red or blue, this topic impacts you.
The lack of available care was the central topic of the “Reimagining Rural Health” summit recently in South Dakota. We have failings in all areas of our health care system. There are doctor and nursing shortfalls, nursing home worker shortages and home health aide shortages; this is worse in rural areas of the country. You may have validated this yourself if you have tried to make a medical appointment recently.
Most of the program centered on recharging our medical care system. Telehealth flexibility is offered as a path to more care for rural patients, meaning more at-home test kits shipped to patients and follow-up with virtual visits subbed for in-person appointments. All of this would have seemed space-aged before COVID changed the paradigm of testing and care, but here we are.
Another significant shift discussed by the panel is the comprehensive reform of our immigration system. This reform will require people to view the benefits and positive outcomes instead of demonizing immigrants. We will have to insist that our lawmakers find common ground that can come from restarting the H1B Visa program, repurposing unused visas for health care workers and, other ideas being considered by health care providers, considering using undocumented workers as nursing home aides. These jobs have meager take rates and that ultimately impacts you.
We need more nurses and doctors. Public and private initiatives can help address some parts of this problem, such as lowering medical school costs or offering loan forgiveness so newly minted health care workers can consider taking jobs in lower-paying rural health care systems. Remember that lawmakers’ actions will ripple through the next decade. It takes 10 years to educate a student through medical school to a non-specialty practice like family medicine.
When you hear or read of draconian cuts to our health care system, mass deportations of immigrants, trashing loan forgiveness programs for medical school students and other graduates who might replenish our medical brain drain, please speak up – loudly – to your lawmakers or the White House. We have hired them to work, and as a boss of mine used to say, “That’s why we call this work because it is.”
And tick tock, according to the American Medical Association, 11,000 people turn 65 daily in America.
Megan Giles Cooney is a columnist for the Traverse City (Michigan) Record-Eagle and CNHI Newspapers
