WILLIAMSTON, N.C. — Two years after her brother’s death, Debra Pierce still wonders whether the 50-year-old would have survived his heart attack if her local hospital hadn’t closed.
“The sad thing is we’ll never know if he could have been saved that night or not, because we don’t have a higher level of care in this county,” Pierce said as she stood outside the mobile home where she last hugged her brother.
Emergency crews from a neighboring town worked on Stanley Sears for a half hour but couldn’t revive him for the long drive to the closest hospital, records show.
In the tall grass — which would be mowed if Sears were still alive — Pierce swiped through the photos on her phone. She stopped at a picture that showed Sears smiling. Pierce chuckled and then sighed: “Bless him.”
Stanley Sears and sister Debra Pierce at a Walmart. Sears died after a heart attack in North Carolina’s Martin County the year after the 2023 closure of Martin General Hospital. (Stanley Sears)
The local hospital had closed a year before Sears’ death, leaving behind a gutted healthcare system. Martin County does not have paramedics on its ambulances, and it can be 20 miles or more to the closest — and often overcrowded — emergency rooms.
The healthcare gaps in Martin County illustrate the finite reach of a $50 billion rural health fund that Republicans crafted to strengthen support for President Donald Trump’s signature tax and spending measure, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, last year. Though the cash has not been doled out, Republican candidates in competitive midterm elections — including the closely watched battle for the congressional district that encompasses Martin County — are casting the fund as a lifeline that will shore up critical rural health services across America.
The money has been highly anticipated in North Carolina, where most residents live in rural counties. Pierce, a Republican who blames county officials for the hospital closu …