$50 B rural health bill that was added to get GOP holdouts to vote for "Big Beautiful Bill" is little help

GOP moderates got punked! Long read

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/rural-hospital-fund-applications-medicaid-cuts-obbba-trump


Only a Fraction of Republicans’ Much-Touted $50 Billion Rural Health Fund Can Help Struggling Hospitals Pay Their Bills


As President Donald Trump’s deadline for a massive budget bill drew near early in the summer, Republican Senate leadership needed to corral the support of some members of the conference. The bill would help pay for tax cuts for the wealthy partly through cuts to Medicaid and needed nearly all Republican votes to pass. The impact on rural hospitals, analysts warned, would be severe. But Republican leadership was able to win over key votes by directing a small slice of money to a “rural hospital fund.”

Now, all 50 states are now vying for a piece of that $50 billion fund, billed as a savior for floundering rural hospitals — and a backstop against the harmful impacts of the now-passed, historic cuts to Medicaid. The fund, and its application process which closed last Wednesday, has been called “the rural health ‘Hunger Games.’” States are in a mad dash for a slice of the investment. 

Despite that, due to Trump administration restrictions on how the fund can be used, advocates now say that hospitals will not be able to spend it in the areas they most need to address.

Under Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services rules for distributing the funds, only 15% of any money awarded to states from this fund can be used to cover unpaid patient care, a major funding shortage for rural hospitals.

“If enough people keep coming in who can’t pay their bills, the hospital can’t just survive on nothing,” Adam Searing, an attorney and research professor at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy, told TPM. “That’s why we have more hospitals closing in non-Medicaid expansion states than elsewhere and this is just going to make that program worse.”