Volunteers along with Veterans Action Group, Oroville city council members, and Senator McGuire rallied for the Red Alert tour to an empty parking lot at the South Side Community Center who hoped to raise awareness for rural hospitals at risk of losing their funding on Saturday, April 25. Could the lack of community support – to save the only local hospital – be directly related to the lack of trust over the quality of care they have been receiving and fed up with malicious billing practices?

Oroville hospital is currently facing serious allegations of insurance billing fraud and a chapter 11 title bankruptcy, the hospital is already lacking the financial cushion to protect against further funding cuts. Putting Oroville, Biggs, Gridley, and other rural towns relying on emergency and surgical care from Oroville Hospital in danger of losing the hospital supporting their needs.

Cathy Kennedy, a President of the California Nurses Association directed the event and introduced the speakers, keeping the volunteers awake. After the event what asked what the people of Oroville can do right now in this fight, Cathy’s response was to “pay attention to the news- because when it hits, it’s going to hit hard. And they’re going to say ‘What just happened here?’… So it’s really important for people to find the research themselves and really look.”

By that response, it’s easy to wonder if someone failed to research the reality residents of the surrounding areas have already faced. If Red Alert would have acknowledged that residents fear using the hospital at all, would they have had more community support at the event?

A very real possibility of Oroville Hospital’s closure already looms without the added pressure of The Big, Beautiful Bill funding cuts Red Alert is specifically responding to. So, we asked Cathy how communities are responding to step up in the face of hospital closures already. Her only suggestion was to rely on “the federal qualified health centers…”, further warning “you have to be careful- because there’s all these for-profit clinics popping up… are test really going to serve the people, or what?”

This suggestion leaves more instability and more work for the sick and injured residents shouldering their need to travel even farther for appropriate care. Will residents step up and save their rural hospital, or has the exploitation of our trust gone too far? Only time will tell.