For example, 41% of rural hospitals in New York are at risk of closing, similar to the 38% in Florida, and a lot more than the 18% in Kentucky. Solid blue Washington is at 33%, worse than Iowa or Indians at 24 and 21%. Idaho, which you call out specifically, is only at 7%.
It’s quite interesting that your first reaction was to demonize rural voters for political choices, in the absence of any data supporting that assumption.
Based on the data here (which your source is based on) four out of the five rural hospital closures in NY are in counties that voted for Trump in 2016:
Voting against Medicare or Obamacare aren't the only ways to vote against healthcare reform, as OP states:
> Politics matters. Voters in rural areas (generally, of course) have consistently voted against policies that would help support health care in these rural locations
You’re begging the question. 90% of rural counties voted for Trump. The phrase “rural hospitals” is pretty much synonymous with “hospitals in counties that voted for Trump. That doesn’t prove that the policies people voted for caused the problems with rural hospitals.
Healthcare is handled at the federal and state levels, not the county level. Thus, rural areas in blue states like New York should be doing better than ones in red states like Florida. They all voted against these policies that supposedly would have helped them—but in Florida they were successful in opposing them while in New York they were overruled by urban areas and got those policies anyway.
For example, 41% of rural hospitals in New York are at risk of closing, similar to the 38% in Florida, and a lot more than the 18% in Kentucky. Solid blue Washington is at 33%, worse than Iowa or Indians at 24 and 21%. Idaho, which you call out specifically, is only at 7%.
It’s quite interesting that your first reaction was to demonize rural voters for political choices, in the absence of any data supporting that assumption.