Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) is definitely ready to compete for the Republican presidential nomination. Check out this
seriously professional Republican double-speak from him.
Speaking to a roomful of Iowa farmers and agricultural executives at the Iowa Ag Summit earlier this month, Gov. Scott Walker touted investments he's made in rural health care. […]
"We invested not only more money in rural health care, we put more money in to train primary care physicians and other health care assistants. And then we put money in our hospitals to help do residencies, so that we weren’t just training—we were actually getting physicians to do their residencies at rural hospitals," Walker said at the Ag Summit on March 7.
"The idea being that if someone comes to a rural community, they do their residency there, they make a connection with the hospital staff—more importantly, they start to know the people in that town and that community and that county — chances are pretty good they’re going to realize it’s pretty good living, with the people around there," he said. "But if you try to recruit them from somewhere else, from either coast out there, it’s a pretty difficult challenge out there. Again, those are things we’ve done."
Those are things Walker's administration has done. They're also programs his new budget would eliminate.
Nearly three-fourths of Wisconsin counties have communities that are "federally designated health professional shortage areas, either by geography or income levels." That means that these communities—in the majority of the counties—are underserved. They don't have doctors. And now, they'll have little hope of getting them.
Byron Crouse, associate dean for rural and community health at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, says that with this state funding eliminated, there is "no way" that the program can continue to exist. So, sorry, would-be rural physicians. You're shit out of luck now in Wisconsin. His 2015-17 budget cuts out the program from the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health's Department of Family Medicine. Walker is not a fan of the University of Wisconsin, clearly. Or of rural health.