Macon County residents have made a clear statement that they oppose Mission Health’s decision to discontinue labor and delivery services at Angel Medical Center in Franklin. 

After a busy week of rallies around the country, the state and the county, progressives gathered at the Historic Haywood Courthouse April 23 to speak out on healthcare and welcome Asheville Republican Congressman Mark Meadows’ first Democratic challenger. 

• Democrats welcome progressives in symbiotic alliance
• Harnessing the progressive tide
• WNC groups claim Meadows isn’t listening
• A short break with Coffay

Born in Florida but raised in tiny Blue Ridge, Georgia — just a few miles outside of Murphy and not far from where Tennessee borders Georgia and North Carolina — Matt Coffay, 30, has spent a little over a decade in Western North Carolina, after moving to Asheville to attain a degree in philosophy. 

Members of several progressive groups concerned over the moral and monetary implications of Affordable Care Act repeal in rural Western North Carolina say that although their congressman isn’t listening to them now, maybe he’ll hear them in 2018.

A progressive tour de force has emerged across the mountains since the election of President Donald Trump.

Thousands of pop-up progressive activist groups have emerged around the country since November’s election.

“More for less” — that’s the message Western North Carolina Congressman Mark Meadows, R-Asheville, is trying to send to Congress and President Donald Trump about the Affordable Care Act.

Renewed concerns about the local impact of President Donald Trump’s proposed budget cuts and his attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act could affect some of Haywood County’s neediest — and smallest — residents.

Where’s Mark?

As in Rep. Mark Meadows, our Republican congressman who reportedly represents the rural and economically challenged residents of mountainous Western North Carolina? Where is he, literally, after his prominent role in the healthcare drama that played out last week in our nation’s capital (otherwise known as the swamp).

Well, if you pay attention to his press office and watch night-time cable news (I’m guilty of both), you’ll find that he’s spent the weeks leading up to the momentous healthcare vote last Friday making the rounds of the various talk shows. Meadows was seemingly basking in the limelight provided by his leadership of the Freedom Caucus, the renegade GOP faction that foiled the President Trump and Rep. Paul Ryan healthcare initiative that was to replace Obamacare.

Republicans under President Barack Obama voted more than 40 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act with no luck. Now, with the White House, the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate all firmly in Republican control — and even a pending Supreme Court majority — the party of opposition has become the party of proposition, but their proposition to repeal and replace the controversial universal healthcare system has been derailed by members of their own party.