Conservative voters will end up paying with their lives for the policies they wanted.

Red states are suffering brain drain, and not just in Idaho. Doctors are packing up and leaving states like Ohio, Tennessee, West Virginia, and more.

Wyoming has one of the worst physician shortages in the country, with rural hospitals closing their maternity wards. Meanwhile, the state legislature is mulling an abortion ban that will make the problem worse. In South Carolina, more than one-third of counties have no prenatal care at all. In Missouri, rural hospitals are closing in droves.

Texas is an especially sharp example of the problem. Doctors are fleeing the state, worsening a shortage that was already at critical levels:

Almost every provider I spoke with for this story has thought about leaving their practice or leaving Texas in the wake of S.B. 8 and Dobbs. Several have already moved or stopped seeing patients here, at least in large part because of the abortion bans. “If I was ever touch a patient again, it won’t be in the state of Texas,” said Charles Brown, chair of the Texas district of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), who stopped seeing patients last year after decades working as a maternal fetal medicine specialist.

…In 2022, 15 percent of the state’s 254 counties had no doctor, according to data from the state health department, and about two-thirds had no OB-GYN. Texas has one of the most significant physician shortages in the country, with a shortfall that is expected to increase by more than 50 percent over the next decade, according to the state’s projections. The shortage of registered nurses, around 30,000, is expected to nearly double over the same period.

  • Evie
    12•10 months ago

    That’s not even remotely true… our state has doubled in residency per our recent consensus and that was before all this and it’s still on record for being one of the most traveled to states to move too… we have some of the best state healthcare and are very liberal in women’s health, we back our teachers independence and we don’t exclude parents either… Our state has many issues, but not enough that we are losing residents in mass, especially to the red states…

    What you are talking about is the switch… we are seeing like minded people move to like minded places. Conservative from blue states, moved to red states and vice versa for democratic/liberal voters to blue… it’s also quite anecdotal in the end.

    • Nougat
      3•10 months ago

      … our state has doubled in residency per our recent [census] …

      What state, which census, and when was the last census?

      Edit: Apparently asking details behind a seemingly impossible assertion is worth a downvote, huh?

    • Neuromancer
      2•10 months ago

      I cited the article. Do you have an opposing cite? Just because the population grew doesn’t mean people didn’t move away.

      I doubt it has less to do with ideology and more to do with the cost of living. I know very few people who moved from Oregon to Texas because of politics. It is almost always because of cost of living. Just like the people I know who moved to Oregon didn’t do so because of the politics. They normally moved for the outdoor life.