the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Sep 29, 2025
Glenn Medical Center, the only hospital in Glenn County, California, is planning to close its emergency department by the end of September, and close the entire hospital by October 21.
The company that owns the hospital, American Advanced Management, says the hospital will no longer be “profitable enough,” because the federal government is reducing reimbursements to Glenn for Medicare and Medicaid.
Federal officials, on their part, say they are cutting down the payments for the hospital because there is another hospital in the area which the county’s Medicare and Medicaid patients can go to. Never mind that the 30,000 residents of Glenn County will now have to travel at least 40 minutes to reach an emergency room—which of course can be a matter of life and death in critical cases.
At least nine rural hospitals in California have closed in the last 20 years, and many others have cut essential services such as birth care and cancer treatment. The reason hospital owners give is always the same: with an impoverished population in rural areas, the hospitals are not “profitable enough.”
In capitalist society, profit trumps human life. Low-income, working-class people are the first to pay the price.