Say, if you want socialized medicine, you don’t have to travel all the way to Canada. Just go to Redfield, where the city owns the hospital:
Community Memorial Hospital and Redfield Clinic was built in 1950 as a 40-bed short term general hospital. The hospital had 8 bassinets, diagnostic services in laboratory and x-ray and treated both medical and surgical patients.
The hospital is non-profit, city-owned, and has a 6 member governing board, all appointed by the Mayor. One of the members will be from the City Council and one member will be appointed from the active Community Memorial Hospital and Redfield Clinic Medical Staff [Redfield Community Memorial Hospital, “A Brief History of the Hospital,” retrieved 2019.08.31].
The Redfield hospital is in the news because on August 19, the Redfield City Council booted hospital administrator Michael O’Keefe and all six members of the hospital board and assumed direct management of the hospital. O’Keefe is an Avera man; the city has replaced him with another Avera man, Tom Snyder, as interim CEO.
Redfield is a town of about 2,300 people, serving as a mini-hub at a major highway intersection between Aberdeen and Huron. Apparently the free market is not able to provide basic health services to those thousands of people where they live, so government has to step in to provide that service.
Yet Spink County is 52.4% Republican.
Since the hospital is “city” owned, the political makeup of the city population is of more interest. Is not the article intended to slam republicans for doing a democrat thing? I don’t know if there is a difference in makeup but at least use the proper stats.
I’m sure one could find many other examples of South Dakota communities owning and managing Elder-care facilities.
Martin, no such city-level stats are available on the Secretary of State’s website. Do you know of a more accurately targeted data set we can use? Can you find evidence that the county seat differs significantly in political makeup from the surrounding area? And can you deny that the central intent of the article, to point out that socialism keeps Redfield’s hospital alive, is misguided or inaccurate?
“Dying of Whiteness” is an incredible prelude to a book by the same title (I’ve not read it yet, but intend to). Here is the author being interviewed in The Guardian. Without coming to our senses regarding gun control, racism and why hospitals are losing the battle with disease and other health issues, white’s will be doomed. Redfield may be a white Republican area, but it’s people have decided to pull the wagon together rather than pushing if against itself. Without the ACA, none of this would be possible. Now if we can expand Medicaid…
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/08/racism-gun-control-dying-of-whiteness