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Dr. Kathryn Crawford, DNP, RN, is a registered nurse in Knoxville, adjunct instructor in the University of Tennessee College of Nursing and works on health policy with the Tennessee Justice Center.
Tennesseans are literally dying as our elected officials leave $1.4 billion per year for our health care sitting in Washington, D.C., instead of working in our struggling rural communities. While Tennesseans wait on our state’s leaders to expand Medicaid, our rural communities continue suffering. As a nurse, I see this play out first-hand. Embracing a woman as she decides to take her husband off life support is hard. Holding this same woman as she regretfully recounts how her husband waited to seek care because a trip to the doctor would have cost too much without insurance moves me to outrage. Because of our elected officials refusal to expand Medicaid, Tennesseans are waiting to seek care, leading to deadly conseq