U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Auburn), the GOP nominee for governor, said last week that Alabama’s rural hospitals are closing because the communities around them are shrinking – and the way to reverse it is to bring manufacturing jobs into rural Alabama.
Tuberville made the case at a Marshall County Republican Party event in Guntersville.
“We have to get more manufacturing out in the rural areas for people to live there,” Tuberville said. “Because what happens is, you don’t have enough people that service these hospitals. You can’t keep them open, and so everybody’s moving to the inner cities and urban areas and using the bigger hospitals.”
Rural hospitals in Alabama have struggled for the same reason for years. Fewer people live in rural counties than a generation ago, and the patients who remain are disproportionately on Medicare, Medicaid or no insurance at all.
Alabama’s reimbursement rates for those programs rank among the lowest in the country, and the Alabama Hospital Association says 84% of the state’s rural hospitals operate at a loss.
Tuberville said the state has the healthcare, and the problem is where it sits.
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“We’ve got good healthcare in this state. The problem is a lot of it is located in just a few areas,” he said. “I want to get rural healthcare back to where it should be. How do you do that? You do it by getting manufacturers in the rural areas where you have more population, where you can get doctors and nurses to work in those hospitals. That’s going to be a huge part of it.”
Fifty-five of Alabama’s 67 counties are rural. Alabama secured $203 million this year in first-round funding from President Trump’s Rural Health Transformation Program, with four more annual rounds ahead. Tuberville said the federal money helps and said population is the long-term answer.
“We’re 60% rural in the state, and the only one way to fix this without money is get people moved to those areas, which we’re going to do,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of manufacturing that’s coming to the state. It won’t be a quick fix, but it’ll be a help to keep these rural hospitals open.”
Tuberville said the approach matches President Trump’s plan to grow the economy out of the national debt.
“It all goes back to one thing. President Trump said, ‘How do you grow out of a $41 trillion debt, in Washington, D.C.?’ How do you do that? You do it by creating more jobs, more people working more, people paying taxes. You don’t want to raise taxes. We’re going to drop taxes,” he said.
Tuberville called rural hospitals a vital part of Alabama’s infrastructure.
Grayson Everett is the editor in chief of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on X @Grayson270.
