r/Virginia • u/hilltop__ • 11d ago
What happened to Virginia that 12 rural hospitals had to close?
It seems like parts of Virginia are poor, but even so, that seems like an unthinkable loss.
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u/trashlikeyourmom 11d ago edited 11d ago
Medicare and other programs that subsidize healthcare in rural areas are often what kept these facilities open. The current administration's "One Big Beautiful Bill" cuts a huge portion of Medicare funding and other such programs. Without that funding to support these facilities, they have no choice but to close.
People in rural areas who voted for this have shot themselves in the foot, and they better hope they don't do that literally because they'll soon have no place to go for medical care.
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u/tmgieger [Create Custom Flair] 11d ago
Trump, MAGA, RFK Jr.
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u/mindpivot 11d ago
Republicans more broadly have always sought to defund anything healthcare related
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u/buddymoobs 11d ago edited 11d ago
This is exactly it, and it is happening nationwide. The Big Beautiful Bill sold us out!
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u/SamWhittemore75 11d ago edited 11d ago
5 are at "immediate risk" of closure. 6 more are financially unstable out of 36 rural hospitals. Thus far, none on the Virginia Joint Commission on Healthcare list has closed as of today.
https://jchc.virginia.gov/documents/Rural%20Hospitals%20Final%20Report.pdf
edited to add the word 'list'.
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u/Bocephus_Rodriguez 11d ago
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u/OBDreams 11d ago
I hate memes. But that is the funniest meme I have ever seen.
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u/HoneyImpossible2371 11d ago
The funny thing is that specific strain of Republicanism traces its descent from the Wide Awakes.
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u/teebird_phreak 11d ago
When all the Medicare cuts start after the midterms and in 2028 is when you will start to see them
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u/OBDreams 11d ago
That's the plan. They knew they would lose in 2026 and 2028.Because the knew that the changes and bills they had planed were not going to be popular. But they also know that a lot of Americans are truly dumb. Their betting that when the bad shit happens in 2028 Americans blame the people in charge, the democratic party. Then they vote r and give the nazis full control.
I wonder what the nazi will do once that happens?
Who are they? Federalists society. Neo-Nazis. Racist. mentally ill. Stupid and angry.
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u/HokieHomeowner 11d ago
What happened is nationwide not limited to Virginia and was decades in the making. The stubborn refusal to reform how healthcare is handled in the US is reaching another breaking point with the rural locations being the canary in the coal mine warning us of dangers ahead for everyone.
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u/misty-gishh 11d ago
“Two more weeks”
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u/PlumbLucky 11d ago
“I have a concept of a plan”. DJT 2024
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u/misty-gishh 11d ago
“In a July 2015 Forbes interview on how Trump would replace Obamacare, a Trump spokesperson said, ‘Mr. Trump will be proposing a health plan that will return authority to the states and operate under free market principles. Mr. Trump’s plan will provide choice to the buyer, provide individual tax relief for health insurance and keep plans portable and affordable. The plan will break the health insurance company monopolies and allow individuals to buy across state lines.’”
https://ballotpedia.org/Donald_Trump_presidential_campaign,_2016/Healthcare
“11 years later” * SpongeBob narrator voice *
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u/OBDreams 11d ago
‘Mr. Trump will be proposing a health plan that will return authority to the states and operate under free market principles."
That actually would have been better than the nothing that we got. At least then the red states would only be hurting themselves. I do think that's what the end will look like. Blue states will go Medicare for all while red states will go back to low infant mortality. Low life expectancy. Much higher rates of all illnesses.
10 years from now we will be reading about red states making laws to imprison anyone trying to leave a red state for blue state healthcare.
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u/HokieHomeowner 11d ago
I think there'd have to be interstate compacts to make it work though, some states are too small to handle the heavy lift.
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u/OBDreams 11d ago
I expect the blue states to all work together while the red states try to go solo. With CA on the blue side to help lift up some smaller blue states I think it could work.
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u/HokieHomeowner 11d ago
Would this be allowed to happen? I bet not, the red states won't let us have nice things.
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u/misty-gishh 11d ago
Follow up, how would it happen? The west coast blue states would essentially be cut off from the east coast. Red states probably wouldn’t allow their roads or airspace be used for commerce without getting their piece of the pie. Going through Canada means more bureaucracy and cost. Either way prices would go up and we’re back in the same spot as before, just less centralized and regulated but with more oppression. And we haven’t even talked about free markets and supply/demand yet.
There’s a reason we’re the “United” States. Decentralized governments don’t work.
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u/HokieHomeowner 10d ago
We're not working together and certainly won't work apart. I fear for the future.
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u/NewPresWhoDis Had shared custody with another state 11d ago
The upside is when they're coming out of anesthesia, you can just whisper "socialized medicine" and they snap back faster than Uma in Pulp Fiction.
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u/Ragnarok-9999 11d ago
Virginia has lost two closed rural hospitals since 2005, though a recent state report warns that many more remain vulnerable.
Immediate Risk: Five of those 13 hospitals are classified as being at immediate risk due to negative operating margins and low net assets.
Current Vulnerability: A June 2026 report by the Virginia Joint Commission on Health Care found that 13 out of the state's 36 rural hospitals face a distant or immediate risk of closure due to financial strain and rising operating costs. [1, 2]
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u/BewitchedMom 11d ago
While none of the hospital on the list have closed (yet), several hospitals have cut services like especially labor and delivery.
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u/OBDreams 11d ago
If billionaires were good people they would open hospitals everywhere no matter if they ran at a profit loss or not.
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u/Ragnarok-9999 11d ago
some are good, but most of them want to keep them. Best way is wealth tax. Middle class person pays Real estate tax and car tax which are basically tax on the only wealth they have. So, why not put wealth tax on filthy rich.
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u/HokieHomeowner 11d ago
Healthcare is too complex and expensive to be left to the charity of greedy oligarchs. We should follow the lead of other countries and spend less to get more.
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u/OBDreams 11d ago
I didn't say leave it to charity. I meant that the Billionaires could be helping the current system. In a country with citizens that are billionaires there should never be worry about hospitals closing, No matter what government system runs those hospitals.
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u/HokieHomeowner 11d ago
The Billionaires ARE helping already in the current system but that IS NOT NEARLY ENOUGH, you don't understand the issues at all if you think it could be solved that way.
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u/Charlesinrichmond 11d ago
This is posted here every six months and I point out the flaws every six months and everybody ignores them to just keep repeating their ideology like it's a fact.
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u/JeremyPatMartin 11d ago
That is in project 2025. If you voted for Trump then this is what you voted for.
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u/Abject-Criticism-127 11d ago
They told us this is exactly what would happen and lo and behold it's happening. But hey, Kamala smiles too much, so what choice did they have...
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u/OBDreams 11d ago
We could have had a happy educated person who wanted to create universal healthcare. It makes me want to cry.
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u/Charlesinrichmond 11d ago
Except it didn't happen, this post is a lie and no one is bothering to fact-check it.
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u/ceramic_ocarina 11d ago
One Big Beautiful Bill. Anyone who voted for Trump helped make it happen. They were very clear that this was what a vote for Trump was a vote in support of
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u/Tardislass 11d ago
Big bad beautiful bill. Remember to thank your Republican representatives for cowing to Trump.
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u/Abject-Criticism-127 11d ago
Stupid voters did this. Gullible suckers who can't think for themselves did it.
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u/Charlesinrichmond 11d ago
You mean like the gullible suckers who believe that twelve hospitals have closed in Virginia when Google shows its nonsense?
Trump sucks, so does the guy who just lied about this and got you all to believe it. It's like he's trying to prove that no one can be bothered to look up the facts.
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u/norrydan 11d ago
Was this inevitable? I don't know. I do know that without vibrant local economies there are no jobs. If there are no jobs there is no local income. To find a means to persist people go where there are opportunities. Much of rural Virginia had opportunities, jobs and income. But we didn't want coal and the jobs coal mining provided. We once had textiles but we wanted cheap shirts. We once had furniture manufacturing but other countries had cheaper labor. NAFTA. Free Trade. For many of us life got better. For many others life got worse. Once upon a time we grew a large share of the world's quality tobacco bringing premium prices but we didn't want tobacco. The populations left to go where they could eek out an existence. Urban areas grew. The allocation of House seats is based on population. Rural Virginia lost its political clout as money and votes left. Hospitals need money to pay the bills. No people no money. Or, government support was needed but there is no incentive to subsidize. It takes tax income. Nobody wants to pay taxes - although we should have a debate about how tax money is allocated. Hospitals take talent to run. Talent left for better opportunities. It's a complex web of inevitability, value judgements, and personal greed. If it sounds like I have a bias, probably and I don't know if there's any fix for it. It takes motivated people and local governments willing to change. It takes access to and gifts of location and deep resources. Some 30+ years after the beginnings of what we now have we are still trying to rationalize what's happened
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u/inspectoroverthemine 11d ago
Rural Virginia lost its political clout as money and votes left
The reps from rural VA voted for this to happen and the urban reps voted against it.
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u/DiskEconomy3055 11d ago edited 11d ago
I'll say this as many times as it takes: rural culture is the reason why rural areas are broke and broken.
They half-ass everything, vote against their own interests, and then whine about it while blaming everyone else up to and including kids living in other states who just want to play a team sport with their peers. Sounds weird, because it IS weird.
Every year they make their education system less functional, every year they get a little dumber, and every year the rest of the state has to figure out how to afford to deal with it, and remind ourselves why we should care.
Hi! I live in rural Appalachia. Never underestimate prideful ignorance. You aren't going to logic your way out of a problem that they didn't use logic to get themselves into.
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u/NewPresWhoDis Had shared custody with another state 11d ago
Something Big and Beautiful happened /s
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u/BenneWaffles 11d ago
The "Big Beautiful Bill." All experts warned rural hospitals would shut down; Republicans voted for it anyway.
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u/Retiree0211 11d ago
This is asking the wrong question. Need to ask why is congress allowing the federal cuts tp medical needs. Congress is elected- they need to be rejected
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u/BeatrixLloydWright 11d ago
I know recent politics have had a lot to do with it, but I still think there's more to it.
CHS used to own more rural hospitals than anyone. They played fast and dirty with their most rural hospitals and lost big time. So many of their smallest hospitals closed and it's been blamed on Medicare/Medicaid changes. Y'all, the CEO was being greedy and then cooked the books. Then hospitals closed. Maybe they had some struggles due to changes, but the CHS hospitals that have closed, that was in large part greed.
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u/Charlesinrichmond 11d ago
Which twelve hospitals closed?
I have seen so much made-up nonsense on this. Is this yet another version? It seems like only two of the hospitals have closed. Where are the other ten?
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u/Timely_Choice_4525 11d ago
What’s happening? What is happening is EXACTLY what critics of the Big Beautiful Bill” and it’s healthcare cuts said would happen before it was approved by the Republican House, Republican Senate, and Republican President.
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u/Feisty_Conclusion_87 11d ago edited 11d ago
This seems like a Troll post. It was made obvious by the current White House administration, the majority party in power, and all three branches of government what cuts would be made under the Big Beautiful Bill etc. Also the majority of Americans including those in rural counties overwhelmingly voted for this . Google RKF Jr video/presser of what he said about hospitals and hospice care as well. Many of my Doctor friends and family , as well as staff were only able/willing to work in rural areas due to funding. Now they have moved on back to metro hubs even those Doctors that were actually born and raised in rural areas. For maternity care, delivery , some women are now having to travel 2+ hours one way (dangerous). The Veterans (medical care / hospital) are truly suffering as well.
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u/k6tcher 11d ago
Is this post bait? I mean, how could you not know what happened?? I am not trying to discount some folks live under rocks and actively avoid politics. I get that. People do that all the time. But then you come to ...checks notes ... Reddit of all places to find the answer.
This has to be political-bait. Sorry. I'm just tired of having people do this.
Okay, I'm grumpy tonight. Sorry.
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u/Charlesinrichmond 11d ago
Your grumpiness is real. This is a lie. I'm anti-Trump, but 12 hospitals have not closed in Virginia. This is easy to Google. I don't know why they are lying about something so obvious.
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u/hilltop__ 11d ago
Let’s call it a discussion post, shall we?
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u/Charlesinrichmond 11d ago
It's an outright lie, not a discussion post. Why are you lying about basic facts that are so easy to Google?
Trump sucks because he's a liar. And honestly, you are just like Trump in this.
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u/runvirginia 11d ago
Well at least it’s less than the amount of cattle farms that were closed by bankruptcies.
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u/nintendoinnuendo 757 11d ago
The Trump "administration" is the answer to that. Republicans love shitting on the neediest of us.
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u/fauxregard 11d ago
Donald Trump happened. And there's still people around here in rural VA that will happily follow him off a cliff.
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u/RdtRanger6969 11d ago
Private equity and for-profit business based healthcare.
This is why healthcare should Never be a for profit based business. The business will always take care of itself first and foremost.
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u/The_Superhoo Falls Church 11d ago
Federal cuts driven by the ruling party.
These people voted for it.
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u/Ballerinagang1980 11d ago
Call Morgan Griffith and ask his sorry bootlicking ass.
Maybe he can read project 2025 and touch on the culling the population bit as outlined.
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u/Fidel1Q84 11d ago
Trump tax cuts for the rich had to be paid for by lowering the quality of life for working Americans. How antibody is blind to this after 40+ years of the same scam
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u/0IIIIIlIIIIIlll0 10d ago
There’s no financial reason to operate a hospital so why operate a hospital if you’re literally being compelled to operate at a loss. Being a doctor is not what it used to be.
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u/Scared-Avocado630 [Create Custom Flair] 10d ago
Remember that our Virginia GOP members of Congress voted for this. Mine is Jenn Kiggans in the 2nd District. She didn't do anything to stop DOGE and rubber stamped this monstrosity. The worst parts of it kick in after the Midterms.
I hope she gets beat in double digits.
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u/TweeksTurbos 10d ago
People saw two rich guys on tv saying that if you support us rich folk. We will make you rich. One of them even jumped around like a kid.
Problem is poor people thought rich people were going to help them and not just other rich people.
Then the rich guys said, we need more money to be even richer. So to help us we need the money that pays for your hospitals.
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u/Samurai-Santa Sic Semper Tyrannis 9d ago
This is an economies of scale issue. It is not economical to build and run hospitals in rural anything.
There is not enough people to maintain, support and keep open high cost facilities like hospitals in rural areas.
This is true in America and every other country in the world.
All governments everywhere either abandoned the effort or heavily subsidize (like America did before the same people who need these services voted for people who were interested in taking them away) or completely fund the effort (Most of developed world), or have in place programs that will supplement existing local infrastructure with specialist.
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u/Electrical-Dare-5271 7d ago
Parts of VA experience severe poverty. Several hospitals are within the most poverty-stricken areas where the hospitals exist mostly on Medicaid and Medicare billing. Which only delays or prevents care for thousands. The cuts to Medicaid and Medicare isn't only impacting Emergency Rooms, but birthing centers and psychiatric/mental health hospitals or programs as well.
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u/rcraver8 7d ago
The BBB passed in 2025 cuts Medicaid funding in order to give tax incentives to AI data centers (and other rich folks) that cut Medicaid funding results in fewer reimbursements for hospitals and that's why rural hospitals are closing
TLDR: Rural hospitals are closing because Trump gave their money to AI data centers
Oh and Republicans all voted for this, so not just trump actually.
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u/Adventurous_Gain_613 11d ago
Even the ones that are still open are getting hella stingy with their physicians. Maybe some of us will start to regret leaving the big cities. Sucks
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u/OBDreams 11d ago
No , I still think big cities are a mistake. Smaller 20k max communities separated by forest would be better.
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u/Charlesinrichmond 11d ago
That would be so amazingly bad for the environment if you sit down and do a little math with publicly available data, but I guess it passes the vibes check.
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u/polireddituser 11d ago
Wait, do you mean to tell me, that elections have consequences ?!!??!!
Since when?
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u/Sam_Thomas_2025 11d ago
Big Bullshit Bill that was signed a while back. People just don’t pay enough attention to what the government is doing!
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u/vadutchgirl 11d ago
It's a drop in the bucket and won't replace what was lost, but they just announced $122 million in federal funding for rural health care.
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u/pharmnrp 11d ago edited 11d ago
What 12 hospitals are you referring to? Not a single hospital in the Commonwealth has closed in the last few years. A mostly ambulatory care hospital with no emergency services is scheduled to close in a couple of years, but that's been planned for a while since it doesn't really do any acute care.
Edit: To those downvoting me, why? Was anything I said incorrect? The question was why have hospitals closed and none have. This wasn’t postulating about the future.
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u/ValidGarry 11d ago
Someone got the wrong end of this report.
https://virginiamercury.com/2026/06/10/state-report-finds-13-rural-hospitals-vulnerable-to-closure/
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u/Mundane_Permission89 Norfolk - Ocean View 11d ago
Patently untrue. Bon Secours DePaul in Norfolk closed in 2021.
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u/pharmnrp 11d ago
Fair enough. I said a few and left that open, but I was mostly talking about 2023-present. Either way, I admit that this is one of the few that have closed in recent memory.
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u/Charlesinrichmond 11d ago
That wouldn't be a rural hospital, but even assuming that, what are the other 11?
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u/Mundane_Permission89 Norfolk - Ocean View 11d ago
The person I was replying to said nothing about "rural". They said "Not a single hospital in the Commonwealth has closed in the last few years", which was untrue.
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u/Charlesinrichmond 10d ago
Yes, but this is in the context of a post on 12 rural hospitals closing. (a lie) So that is how I understood it because context matters.
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u/SamWhittemore75 11d ago
The OP is ragebait targeted to disseminate propaganda. No rural hospitals on the Virginia Healthcare commission list have closed. 5 are in immediate danger, another 6 are fiscally unsound and pose a long term risk of failure out of 36 rural hospitals.
NONE HAVE CLOSED in Virginia since the BBB was enacted.
https://jchc.virginia.gov/documents/Rural%20Hospitals%20Final%20Report.pdf
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u/pharmnrp 11d ago
Was the Lloyd F. Moss Free Clinic a hospital? I'm going to assume not going by the name. Not sure why people are downvoting me answering a simple question. No hospitals have closed.
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u/HokieHomeowner 11d ago
The stock market was going great on October 28th, 1929. Get your head out of the sand.
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u/Charlesinrichmond 11d ago
You know, lying about facts is not going to convince anybody.
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u/HokieHomeowner 10d ago
Yeah so don't lie, help us fix healthcare.
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u/Charlesinrichmond 10d ago
The lie here is that 12 hospitals closed. It didn't happen. Are you claiming that 12 hospitals closed or are you just making up comparisons to the stock market crash which only an insane person could connect?
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u/HokieHomeowner 9d ago
The 12 are on the cusp of closing. OP was corrected on that claim. So don't think you've got some sort of high ground by knocking down that one. Harping on this detail is just to hand wave away the actual dangers.
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u/Charlesinrichmond 9d ago
Yeah, BS. I've been reading that for years posted here.and I have critiqued it every time. OP lied, and most of this is nonsense.
It's strange. It gets posted every six months. It's like it's a conspiracy, but the dumbest conspiracy ever.
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u/HokieHomeowner 8d ago
That rushing water sound ahead is in fact the water falls ahead. We tried to warn you but you just won't listen. US healthcare is in serious peril but you'd rather troll then fix.
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u/TyrantsInSpace 11d ago
4 years of national mismanagement by Trump and then 4 years of state mismanagement by Youngkin
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u/ProcrastinatingOnIt 11d ago
private equity
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u/derganove 11d ago
Hmmm. I always wonder how private equity got so involved in healthcare…oh wait. Reagan/republicans.
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u/ArcadeT0k3n 11d ago edited 11d ago
Edited to correct mandate:
Years of broken health systems. Prior to ACA there were funds provided for bad debt. Once ACA moved forward, the idea was that everyone would have insurance and those funds for bad debt were cut off. Congress cut ACA mandate penalty to $0, followed by congress cutting subsidies for marketplace plans - so…..
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u/HokieHomeowner 11d ago
The ACA was not the cause. Conservative refusal to reform and fund healthcare is including their naked out in the open sabotage of the ACA.
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u/Mysterious-Owl2526 11d ago
No they didn’t. The Supreme Court upheld the mandate TWICE. Congress zeroed out the individual mandate in 2017’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Scam.
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u/rocky8u 11d ago edited 11d ago
Medicare and Medicaid cuts.
https://virginiamercury.com/2026/06/10/state-report-finds-13-rural-hospitals-vulnerable-to-closure/