Alabama faces a ‘demographic cliff’ as deaths surpass births
Alabama faces a ‘demographic cliff’ as deaths surpass births
My money is on failure to engage with medical care due to costs.
Rumor is the hospitals down there tightly ration their care. The health industry rations care not just in the way Luigi pointed out, but in not staffing their hospitals with enough personnel and overbooking primary doctors like they’re airports during the holidays.
Scheduling a PCP visit takes months. Doctors get 10min per patient plus a ton of electronic boxes to check. If you’re late, then you lose your appointment and now have to wait weeks or months for another appointment. How many problems get missed in this system?
Also. Items that used to be CT scans are now recommended to be ultrasound first. Why? CTs had this cool side feature where they’d spot other problems that you weren’t looking for but needed to be addressed right away. So, now ultrasound is the standard, as it’s highly focused and far less likely to catch a peripheral picture of a second problem.
ED won’t fix it unless it’s an emergency, meaning, you’re about to die, the months long waiting doesn’t make it an emergency.
Hiring or not is choice made by corporate, one that can cut into profits. So it’s rationed as is all the money in health care.
As to why fewer people are being born, there are several suggested reasons by researchers - women are marrying later in life, and couples are choosing career over childrearing in their 20s, meaning fewer children can be born. The cost of raising a child can be a factor for low-income families, while more affluent people may opt to spend their time and money on themselves. Fewer teenagers are reporting having sex. Alabama is no longer a primarily agrarian economy, where big families tend to split the farm work.
[Emphasis mine.]
Make a more equal society. Not only will you help solve the falling birthrate issue, you’ll have happier and more productive people overall. Stop culture-war bullshit.
Gee, I wonder why…