I’d been mulling over a hypothetical chain of logically connected incidents, but it turns out it may already be underway in Missouri. glesslib (“an old blue lady”) on The Daily Kos explains:
I have, over the past two years, noticed a marked increase in the number of assisted living facilities in [Columbia, MO], as well as senior apartments and condominiums. Granted, Columbia is growing a lot, but the number of these senior apartments in a college town is amazing. At the same time, hospitals in small rural towns in Missouri are struggling to stay afloat. More will close, if Medicaid is cut. And that’s something our state legislature is always looking to cut.
As those small hospitals close and our population ages, the time has come where these two problems collide, and that collision brings moves from small towns to cities. Cities like Columbia.
When there is no hospital in a small town, or the doctors begin retiring, or a peron develops a health issue that sends him or her for medical assistance an hour away, it’s a real wake-up call as to what will happen in a serious medical emergency. So, if the health care leaves, the people won’t be far behind, starting with the oldest and most vulnerable. And when the people leave those little towns die. And when those little towns die they don’t need some teapartying, Medicaid-cutting, underemployed lawyer to represent them in Jefferson City.
That’s what I’ve been thinking. Then she continues.
As people move to larger metropolitan areas, even if it’s just a city of one hundred thousand like Columbia,, over time, their thinking begins to change. They become more cosmopolitan. It takes time, but they become less susceptible to the classic GOP scares. Pretty soon, perhaps two or three election cycles, the legislature isn’t just a place favorite sons of small towns come to become semi- important. Hopefully government will begin to mean something again.
That hadn’t occurred to me.
The GOP has come to be the party of stasis – but in this era, stasis doesn’t even apply to monuments. Against the broad background of the inevitable demographic shifts of the Boomers aging and going away, the refusal to provide proper medical care may bring reprisals from their own base. (Curiously enough, this may bring to the fore the problem of different sectors of society, and the mistake of applying one’s methods to another.)
There may be an opening, but whether or not the Democrats are able to take advantage of it is is another question.
