Weeks said there’s just one primary care physician per 2,100 Sussex residents. That’s a significantly higher ratio than in Kent and New Castle counties.

Local leaders believe that bringing a medical school to Sussex County could be part of the solution. State Sen. Russell Huxtable, who represents the 6th District, said a medical school could help attract more doctors to a place that desperately needs them.

“One of the thoughts that people are having is if we establish a medical school in the fastest-growing county where we have additional challenges as far as health care’s concerned … it could help recruit those folks,” he said. “The three hospitals that are in Sussex County would be a great place for those folks to have their residencies, and it could help build the network of medical capacity within the county.”

While a medical school could help, Weeks emphasized that building one from the ground up is not realistic. Instead, the study suggested a partnership with an existing institution to open a branch campus and for hospitals in the area to support each other.

“What it did suggest, and it’s been done in several places around the country, is you align yourself with a current medical school that would consider opening … a branch campus,” Weeks said. “The critical infrastructure element, if you will, for a medical school [branch] is clinical rotations, clinical practice to get into a hospital and actually work with patients.”

The study found that no single health care system in the county — Beebe Healthcare, Bayhealth or TidalHealth — has enough resources on its own to support a medical school. However, if these three systems collaborate and combine their clinical resources for education, they would have the necessary capacity to make it possible, according to the study.

Despite enthusiasm for the idea, finding the money to build and sustain a medical school remains a major challenge.

“Probably the biggest challenge is just simply money,” Weeks said. “It’s just simply the money to build a medical school, simply the money to help the hospitals grow their medical education programs. Those two things, just the financing alone, that’s kind of a big lift.”

While Democratic Gov. Matt Meyer declared that “Delaware is the best place in the world to incorporate your business, and Senate Bill 21 will help keep it that way,” critics reiterated concerns about the corporate-friendly state legislation he signed this week.

The Delaware House of Representatives sent the Senate-approved S.B. 21 to Meyer’s desk on Tuesday in a 32-7 vote, with two members absent. The Delaware Business Timesreported that the governor “arrived in Dover to sign the measure into law less than two hours after it passed,” and “the bill signing was closed to the press.”

The bill sailed through the Delaware General Assembly despite anti-monopoly, economic, and legal experts blasting it as a “corporate insider power grab” and accusing state legislators of choosing “billionaire insiders—like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg—over pension funds, retirement savers, and other investors.”

Delaware Working Families Party (WFP) political director Karl Stomberg said in a Wednesday statement that “at a time when rank-and-file Democrats across the country are begging their leaders to stand up to” President Donald Trump and Musk, his billionaire adviser, Democratic lawmakers in the state “just gave Musk a $56 billion handout.”

That’s a reference to Musk’s 2018 compensation package for his electric vehicle maker, Tesla, which a Delaware judge ruled against, prompting the richest billionaire on Earth to ditch the state and encourage other business leaders to do the same. Fears of a potential “Dexit” led to lawmakers’ frantic effort to pass S.B. 21.

“The Working Families Party has been standing up against this proposed bill for weeks now, and we recognize the need to fight back against corporate overreach in our government,” said Stomberg. “WFP electeds proposed serious amendments to address our concerns with the bill that would protect the people of Delaware, but the Democrats chose to side with Musk and vote them down.”

“This bill is an indictment of the failed Delaware Way, which continues to allow big corporations and the ultrawealthy like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg to enrich themselves at the expense of working people,” added Stomberg.

Zuckerberg is the CEO of Meta, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company. CNBC recently revealed that “a day after The Wall Street Journal published its story on Meta considering a Delaware departure, Meyer, who was brand new to the job, convened an online meeting with attorneys from law firms that have represented Meta, Musk, Tesla, and others in shareholder disputes in the state, according to public records obtained by CNBC. Other attendees included members of the Delaware Legislature.”

“The following day, records show, Meyer invited a second group to meet with him and new Secretary of State Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez. That invitation went to Kate Kelly, Meta’s corporate secretary, and to Dan Sachs, the company’s senior national director of state and local policy,” according to CNBC. “The invite also went to James Honaker, an attorney with Morris Nichols, a firm that’s represented Meta in federal court in Delaware, and to William Chandler, former chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery, who is now part of Wilson Sonsini’s Delaware litigation practice.”

Just weeks after those meetings, the governor urged state lawmakers to swiftly pass S.B. 21. The Lever‘s Luke Goldstein wrote Wednesday that “the timing of the emails obtained by CNBC reveals clear motivations driving the current law which was rushed before the Legislature last month by the new governor: to let top executives off the hook for legal liabilities.”

In earlier reporting, Goldstein highlighted that “Delaware, which has long been perceived as a billionaire playground and corporate tax haven, is the incorporation home to more than 60% of all Fortune 500 companies. That means, if enacted, the wide-ranging regulatory handouts in the bill will have sweeping consequences for corporate behavior across the country.”

The Lever’s founder, David Sirota, on Wednesday lamented the limited attention the Delaware law is receiving, compared with a major national security breach involving several top Trump officials’ unsecure group chat about war plans. As he put it, “Cannot overstate how significant this is—while the national media is focused on the D.C. drama, a group of Democrats off the radar in a tiny state just radically shifted more power to the planet’s largest corporations via world-changing legislation.”

Daniel Hanley, senior legal analyst at the Open Markets Institute, said Wednesday that “the Delaware lawmakers that enacted S.B. 21 are lapdogs for corporations and Musk. How this one state came to control practically all of American corporate law is a long story, but regardless, Congress can and should take the power away.”

We all dream of the day we can finally stop setting an alarm to sit at a desk five days a week, but how much does it actually cost to retire comfortably these days?

A recent study revealed what you need for 20 years of comfortable retirement, along with how much you need to save monthly. Here are the numbers for Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware:

By the numbers:

New Jersey residents will have to save the most among the three states, but it’s not the only one that requires more than $1 million in savings.

New Jersey

• Cost of 20 years of comfortable retirement: $1,567,009

How much you need to save monthly for 20 years of comfortable retirement (through age 85):

• If you start at age 20: $2,902
• If you start at age 30: $3,731

Delaware

• Cost of 20 years of comfortable retirement: $1,073,314

How much you need to save monthly for 20 years of comfortable retirement (through age 85):

• If you start at age 20: $1,988
• If you start at age 30: $2,556

Pennsylvania

• Cost of 20 years of comfortable retirement: $734,378

How much you need to save monthly for 20 years of comfortable retirement (through age 85):

• If you start at age 20: $1,360
• If you start at age 30: $1,749

Want to enjoy your retirement in Florida instead? It will cost you less than staying in New Jersey with a total of $1,132,118!

Dig deeper:

Based on the retirement age of 65, and the life expectancy of 85, GOBankingRates determined the amount you need to save monthly for a comfortable retirement by analyzing data from the U.S. Census American Community Survey, the Missouri Economic and Research Information Center, the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey, the Zillow Home Value Index, the Federal Reserve Economic Data and the Social Security Administration.