With an estimated upwards of one trillion dollars in cuts to the Medicaid program from the One Big Beautiful Bill, healthcare experts and providers predict significant drop in access to services for rural Americans.
Rural hospitals facing cuts in Medicaid will struggle to figure out how to stay open in the coming years, experts said during a recent rural summit.
Although rural hospitals are working to find ways to address looming cuts in reimbursement, the tipping point to staying open is coming, according to participants in the One Country Project panel titled “Rural Health Care: Doing More with Less is Not Sustainable.”
As part of President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” Congress made more than one trillion dollars in cuts to the Medicaid program. Those changes are due to take effect between 2026 and 2028. The bill also includes a carve-out of $50 billion for rural hospitals over six years, but critics have said the money would fall short of what is needed.
Panelists during the session were Dr. Tom Dean, retired family physician and former president of the National Rural Health Association; Kevin Stansbury, CEO of Lincoln Community Hospital and Care Center in Hugo, Colorado; and Jeanne Lambrew, director of Healthcare Reform for the Century Foundation.
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