{"id":7185,"date":"2016-03-01T10:00:28","date_gmt":"2016-03-01T16:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/?p=7185"},"modified":"2016-03-03T01:13:44","modified_gmt":"2016-03-03T07:13:44","slug":"the-appointment-that-never-happened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2016\/03\/the-appointment-that-never-happened\/","title":{"rendered":"The appointment that never happened"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IF\"
\nDecember 31, 2015:<\/strong> Dr. Haldy’s dentist office in Traer, on his last official day in business.<\/em><\/p>\n

I was supposed to see my dentist on caucus day. Instead, though, I found out in October that Willard Haldy, Traer’s dentist, planned to retire at the end of the year. He had been in practice since 1959. His first business card has two letters at the beginning of the phone number.<\/p>\n

Haldy may well be Traer’s last dentist. It’s hard to recruit young professionals of any<\/em> type to rural Iowa, let alone those with crushing student debt. The Iowa Public Policy Center recently raised the alarm (as reported by KCRG<\/a>) that rural areas are facing an imminent if not already happening shortage of dentists as active ones retire.<\/p>\n

Go ahead and make it a Mad Lib: Rural areas are facing a shortage of [profession] as Baby Boomers start retiring and young adults are not interested in living there.<\/em><\/p>\n

It is unfortunate that when Iowa had the nation’s attention in the presidential race, “rural issues” got boiled down to the Renewable Fuel Standard and nothing else,\u00a0this Detroit political cartoon notwithstanding<\/a>. The decrease in services for rural areas is something that deserves more attention.<\/p>\n

Update 3\/2: I KNEW THINGS WERE GOING TOO WELL. I KNEW IT.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

December 31, 2015: Dr. Haldy’s dentist office in Traer, on his last official day in business. I was supposed to see my dentist on caucus day. Instead, though, I found out in October that Willard Haldy, Traer’s dentist, planned to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[18,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iowa-miscellaneous","category-tama-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7185"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7212,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7185\/revisions\/7212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}