Washington, D.C. — The Trump administration continues to tout new “investments” in rural health care, but communities across the country are being left to pick up the pieces from Trump and Republicans massive health care cuts. Last year, Donald Trump and Republicans slashed more than $1 trillion from Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to pay for tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations, making the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program a drop in the bucket compared to what states are losing in vital health care funding.
“Trump is trying to put a band-aid on a bullet wound after pulling the trigger,” said Protect Our Care Chair Leslie Dach. “Republicans want rural Americans to be distracted by these press announcements instead of focusing on the health care they are ripping away. But the people in these communities are the ones watching their hospitals struggle, having to drive hours for care, and worrying about what happens when the next service disappears. No sham press tour changes the fact that Republicans blew a hole in our health care system to pay for tax breaks for the ultrawealthy. Voters know exactly who took away their health care, and we’ll see how it drives turnout in November.”
Rural health care leaders themselves have warned that these funds won’t come close to undoing the damage of roughly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, which were part of the “big ugly bill” Trump and Republicans rammed through last year. 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.”
Read our statements in the states below: