Republicans across the country are desperately trying to pull the wool over voters’ eyes, touting their so-called “rural health investments” as if they make up for the $1 trillion they ripped away from Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. It doesn’t come close. These paltry sums of money are a fraction of what states are set to lose in Medicaid funding, leaving state governments, rural hospitals, and health care providers to pick up the pieces. Trump and Republicans gutted our health care to bankroll tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations, and now rural communities are in crisis. Rural Americans are rapidly losing the care they need, and over 1,250 hospitals, clinics, and essential service providers are closing, cutting services, or are at risk of doing so. Read more on how Republican lawmakers gutted health care here.
On the campaign trail, Republican Senators Roger Marshall (KS), Jon Husted (OH), Susan Collins (ME), and Ted Cruz (TX), and Representatives Juan Ciscomani (AZ-06), Jeff Crank (CO-05), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01), Jason Smith (MO-08), and Derrick Van Orden (WI-03), are touting bald-faced lies. These investments will do nothing to stop the gushing wound Republicans hacked in the American health care system.
State
Grant Received This Year
Estimated Total GOP Medicaid Cut
Arizona
Colorado
Iowa
Kansas
Ohio
Maine
Missouri
Texas
Wisconsin
Rural health care leaders themselves have warned that these funds won’t come close to undoing the damage of Trump and Republicans’ cuts to Medicaid. Jed Hansen, the executive director of the Nebraska Rural Health Association, said, “[The] Rural Health Transformation will not save a single hospital in our state. I don’t think it will save a single hospital nationally.”