Health Care Deserts and Higher Costs

The Texas Tribune is reporting on how ‘maternity deserts’ are popping up all over rural Texas and the cause isn’t covid but that certainly helped accelerate the problem.

Declining populations and cuts to Medicaid and Medicare funding have made Texas the national leader in rural hospital closings, with some 26 closures — permanent or temporary — of rural facilities in the last decade. 

Texas Tribune

The article also points out that nurses are leaving rural areas for more lucrative jobs as travel nurses or larger hospitals in larger cities.

The problem isn’t just with nursing. In Washington state, 500,000 people live in ‘pharmacy deserts‘ where prescriptions are not easily or readily available. With a labor shortage continue to grow as boomers retire, we are doubtful this issue will improve any time soon.

University of Washington researchers recently completed an analysis of pharmacy deserts. While the publication is in the review process, Rachel Wittenauer, a Ph.D. student with the university’s CHOICE Institute, said roughly 450,000 adults statewide in both urban and rural areas are living in pharmacy deserts. 

State of Free Form

If anyone thought that Obamacare would solve some or any problem related to health care issues the United States has had over the past few decades, they are in for a rude awakening as Obamacare costs continue to skyrocket out of control. Finance Yahoo is reporting that health care insurance costs are projected to rise 5.4% over the next decade but we think that number will likely be higher.

National health expenditures grew 9.7% to reach $4.1 trillion in 2020 and are projected to grow an annual average of 5.4% between 2019-2028, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS).

Finance Yahoo

Of course, we have been fully aware of the problem and pointed that out in our post, Breaking Point – What Will Cause The Next Economic Crash After Covid, we discussed the idea that increasing housing costs, property taxes, health insurance costs, and low wage growth are all coalescing to form the perfect storm of unaffordability. If nothing else changes, we’ll be in a massive bubble correction: real estate, bonds, stocks, wages, all of it; will correct in some form of crash.

How do we plan on protecting ourselves? By focusing on investments that provide the most fundamental and basic support that humans need. There is no guarantee that we won’t take hits like everyone else but having a plan is better than no plan.

Stay tuned and stay solvent…