About this episode

The episode explores the rural healthcare crisis in Alabama and the implications of federal policy changes on hospital closures.

“Marketplace Morning Report” host Kimberly Adams is back in the “Make Me Smart” podcast feed to share some reporting from a trip to southwest Alabama. It’s a deep dive on rural health care access — about 700 rural hospitals nationwide are at risk of closure, according to the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform. Many of the headwinds are longstanding, but recent federal policy changes from the big Republican tax and spending law signed last year threaten to make the challenges more intense. As those changes kick in, the “Marketplace Morning Report” wanted to better understand what that will mean for communities all around the country. In this episode, we share the lessons learned from Alabama, starting with how hard a hospital closure can hit a community.

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