House Republicans scheme to pretend their Big Fugly Bill will not devastate millions of people, certainly not the Trump supporters in rural areas.
Their lies get blown up by Republican Senator Josh Hawley as he warns the public about the widespread hospital closures that will sweep across the nation.
This will create catastrophic ripple effects.
Read more from The Prospect: Republicans Threaten a Hospital Apocalypse
“As we at the Prospect have reported, while the Senate’s version of the Republican budget reconciliation bill was widely expected to be more moderate than the House one, when it comes to health care it is more extreme.
This came as a surprise to many Republicans, some of whom now want changes.
And they all are highlighting the same area of concern. It would be “potentially really bad for rural hospitals,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) told The Wall Street Journal.
It’s “going to hurt our rural hospitals and hurt them in a big way,” said Sen. Jim Justice (R-WV).
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) expressed “concerns about the effect on rural hospitals in her state.”
This is all certainly true. Senate cuts to the provider tax, a way for states to get more federal funding for their Medicaid programs, along with the House cuts that have been analyzed as leading to at least 11 million people being thrown off Medicaid.
It will deeply harm the 700-plus rural hospitals already at risk of closure.
But that’s too narrow a frame. The entire health care provider network would come under heavy strain, and possibly collapse.”
