If you thought the effects of the GOP health-care plan were the only melancholic irony for Americans living in “Trump country,” Donald Trump’s new and revised “travel ban,” which is currently being appealed in court, will only worsen the already exacerbated medical care shortage in much of rural America.
Residents in American’s rural areas are facing a profound public health crisis: They are disproportionately susceptible to disease, such as obesity, diabetes, and alcoholism, and experience an acute lack of medical care, particularly a lack of primary care physicians. Areas designated as having a shortage of primary care physicians are called Health Professional Shortage Areas. Of all Health Professional Shortage Areas, 68 percent are in rural America.
To combat this crisis, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) issues more than 6,000 J-1 nonimmigrant visas per year for medical trainees from foreign countries to participate in medical residency programs. The vast majority of those residents are placed in health professional shortage areas, which are mostly comprised of Republican-majority rural America.
However, with Trump’s proposed travel ban suspending new entry into the United States from six Muslim-majority countries, according to NBC, who interviewed Atul Grover, the executive vice president of the AAMC, hundreds of doctors from the targeted countries will not be able to begin their medical residency programs this year. Further, this ban will bar an entire generation of future physicians from outside of the U.S. from serving medically underserved communities in the United States. The impact portends a national medical crisis, completely changing the medical landscape of the United States, considering that more than 25 percent of doctors and surgeons are foreign-born.
As you can see from this interactive map created by the Immigrant Doctors Project, foreign doctors play an essential role in the health and wellbeing of rural Americans, particularly in the Rust Belt and Appalachia, which the President and his cabinet do not seem to understand. More than 7,000 doctors in the United States hail from the six banned countries–Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. This amounts to 2.3 million appointments per year in health professional shortage areas who serve 14 million patients per year. For states like Texas, where 45 percent of its 254 counties have five or fewer physicians, that’s the difference between living in sickness or in health.
All of this is not to point fingers at Trump-supporters who gave into xenophobic rhetoric and may have chosen their whiteness over their health, but rather, to better understand the health problems that plague rural America and, moreover, agree that the health and wellness of all Americans should not be a point of bipartisan contention.
What the Immigrant Doctors Project urges people to do is “call their representatives in Congress and tell them how many times each year the residents in your district see doctors from the six targeted countries.” Already, government officials from states with a high concentration of health professional shortage areas are speaking out against the ban. Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson spoke out against Trump’s initial travel ban and joined Washington to challenge the executive order, which resulted in a temporary restraining order. “Checks and Balances” have a whole new meaning with this administration, and one way we can ensure responsible policy change is through the legislative branch, so call your representative, today!
