As Your Congressman, I Will …

Fight to Save Our Hospitals

In the six years since my opponent was elected, nine rural hospitals in our district of West Texas have either closed or significantly scaled back their services. This distressing situation has had a devastating impact on lives, health and local economies.

More recently, some rural hospitals, struggling to stay alive, have made the difficult decision to only offer urgent care. While these facilities still offer outpatient services, they are no longer considered what we all understand to be “hospitals”. The net result: the quality of care in rural areas like ours keeps going down, and the financial burden on West Texans keeps going up.

In public statements, Jodey makes the claim that no rural hospital in Texas has closed since 2020, but that’s misleading. In reality, slick-talking politicians have been reclassifying “rural” areas as “urban,” which artificially improves the numbers on paper. Plus, through clever political maneuvering, the definition of a “hospital” has also been changed to include facilities that operate as triage centers: they can patch you up, but they can’t keep you overnight or perform major surgeries.

For our fellow residents in the 19th Congressional District, the deterioration of our rural hospital system can be a matter of life and death. In the event of a car accident and or any other emergency that requires immediate medical attention, many of our fellow West Texans can have an hour plus ride, past their closed hospitals, to receive emergency hospital services in Abilene or Lubbock.

As your Congressman, I will tirelessly work to address this issue in Austin and Washington. I will work to create solutions and secure support for our hospitals, our doctors and our nurses, who are also affected by this rural healthcare crisis that happened on Jodey’s watch. Once he steps aside, we’ll tackle this challenge the West Texan way: quickly, affirmatively and with purpose. And we won’t stop pushing until we get the outcome we want, need and also deserve.

Together, we can overcome this local healthcare crisis and restore the quality healthcare services West Texans deserve.