Save our hospitals

Tell your lawmakers: Expand Medicaid now to save hospitals

Rural hospitals are essential to communities. They provide care, jobs and community support to hundreds of thousands of Alabamians. Closing the coverage gap would extend a financial lifeline to help rural hospitals remain open to serve everyone when they need care.

Take action! Urge your lawmakers and Gov. Ivey to close Alabama’s coverage gap.

Get the facts

Rural hospitals are essential to the health and economic well-being of rural communities. However, they are a dying breed among health care facilities. Since 2010, at least 134 rural hospitals have closed across the United States, with several hundred more vulnerable to closing in the future. The people from the rural communities surrounding these closed hospitals have to drive substantially farther for care or to deliver newborns and are left without emergency departments. These alarming closure rates are preventable disasters that have been years in the making. Read this report from Families USA to learn more about the crisis.

article: latest rural hospital closure sparks renewed cries for medicaid expansion

The recent suspension of services at Thomasville Regional Medical Center in Clarke County has sparked a renewed outcry from health care advocates for state leaders to expand Medicaid.

The closure “until further notice” of TRMC, located in southwest Alabama, is just the latest in a string of rural hospital closures or service suspensions across the state.

The solution, advocates say, is for state leadership to join the 40 states that have expanded their Medicaid programs to cover those making up to 138% of the federal poverty line, an expansion that comes with significant federal funding under the 2010 Affordable Care Act.