The Hospital Closed. The Mother Died. The Governor Said No to Money that could've saved them.

Harmony Stribling was four days from her delivery date when she woke up with chest pain at 12:30 in the morning. The nearest hospital with a 24-hour emergency room was a 20 to 30 minute drive away — because Humphreys County Memorial Hospital closed in 2013. Her husband Byron drove. Harmony started seizing. He pulled over. Called 911. The ambulance took 10 to 15 minutes to arrive. A nurse later told Harmony's mother-in-law that if oxygen had come sooner, Harper might have survived. And there was a possibility Harmony would have survived too.

Mississippi is one of ten states that still refuses Medicaid expansion — turning down $1 billion a year in federal money. The result: six rural hospitals closed, 48% of the remaining rural hospitals at high financial risk, and a Black maternal mortality rate nearly three times the national average.

Republicans built this hospital desert. But Democrats handed them the blueprint when they, refused to fight for universal healthcare, and left the most vulnerable people at the mercy of state legislatures that would rather let black constituents die than take federal money.

This is the bipartisan body count of American for-profit healthcare.

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