The Medicaid Army in McKees Rocks
In Southwest PA, Put People First! PA members rallied outside of recently shuttered Heritage Valley Kennedy in McKees Rocks, PA.
Lezlee, who helped organize the action, cries, “Our Hospitals Are Being Erased. Our Communities Are Paying the Price. 10 hospitals. Gone. In just 5 years, 10 pillars of community health have fully or partially closed across Pennsylvania. This isn’t just a trend; it’s policy violence. When a rural hospital closes, death rates rise. It’s that simple. It’s a life sentence for residents left without emergency care, without critical services, without a lifeline.
“Take the Ohio Valley Hospital. For 130 years—since 1890—it stood as a guardian of this community. Then, Heritage Valley Health system bought it, not to save it, but to shutter it. They didn’t see a vital institution; they saw a line on a balance sheet.
Amanda from Southwest PA shares a powerful testimony for #MedicaidMondays — right outside the recently CLOSED Ohio Valley Hospital:
“I was born in Ohio Valley Hospital. 29 years later, I had hoped to have my daughter here but the labor and delivery department had closed. I thought I could always rely on having a community hospital minutes away but monied interests and greed took it away as they do many things. I know many older people, including my grandmother, who went to Heritage Valley (it’ll always be Ohio Valley to me) for routine appointments and physical therapy. They now have to travel to Oakdale, Sewickley, or downtown. Many of them do not drive and rely on rides from family and friends. The closure of a hospital trickles down and affects a whole community: the jobs lost, the time and money spent going elsewhere, longer ambulance rides.
“Losing federal dollars threatens these hospital systems, especially hospitals that take Medicaid, and when their goal is profit and not maintaining community care, their solution is to consolidate and close them down. We need to fully fund Medicaid and then fight for universal healthcare that will no longer tie employment to receiving medical care. Policies that focus on the health and well being of each and every one of us. We were put on this planet to take care of each other, it’s time to come together and do exactly that.”
#HealthcareIsAHumanRight
#Medicaid4All
- Actions, hospitals, Medicaid Cut Offs Organizing Drive, Nonviolent Medicaid Army, Southwest PA
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