ObamaMess: NC Mayor Walks 273 Miles to Help save Rural Hospitals including one in his Town

A North Carolina mayor on Sunday was just a few miles away from finishing his 273-mile walk to Washington to draw attention to the closing of his small town’s local hospital and the plights of other rural facilities caught in financial bind created largely by ObamaCare, a changing economy and less federal funding.

“We’re almost there,” Belhaven Mayor Adam O’Neal, a Republican, said as he reached northern Virginia ahead of an approaching thunderstorm. “We’re going to make it.”

The mayor and others argue that an increasing number of small, rural hospitals have been shuttered since ObamaCare was signed into law in 2012.

Still, O'Neal is equally focused on bringing attention to what he considers Department of Health and Human Services and Justice Department failures leading to the closure of Belhaven’s Vidant Pungo Hospital.

“They let our hospital close,” he told FoxNews.com on Sunday. “Nobody is helping our people.

He argues that closing the hospital, which receives federal funds, is a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act because the closure disproportionately impacts poor black people.

However, HHS is now investigating the possible violation, the mayor said.

O’Neal also thinks hospital owner Vidant Health failed to fulfill the terms of mediation required by the Justice Department and that the agency did not follow up on the agreement.

Still, he argues the turning point was after the hospital closed July 1, when a 48-year-old local resident suffered a heart attack, then died waiting an hour for a helicopter to take her to the now-closest hospital, 75 miles away.

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