TOPEKA — A hiring freeze, deferred wage raises and delayed hospital maintenance are all on the table at the Hutchinson Regional Health Center as chief executive officer Benjamin Anderson and his team weigh the potential impacts of a federal budget bill that would axe Medicaid, forcing rural hospitals in Kansas to shutter.
Federal lawmakers are scrambling to approve the massive bill, which is replete with major tax cuts and public program reductions, before the Fourth of July. Since the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act was first proposed, Medicaid has been slated for billions in cuts, which has caused advocates and health providers to warn communities and elected officials of dire consequences.
Across the country, rural hospitals will face $70 billion in cuts over the next decade under the current version of the bill.
A REPORT FROM the National Rural Health Association and Manatt Health, released Tuesday, found that rural hospitals will lose 21 cents out of every dollar they receive for funding Medicaid, the joint state and federal public health insurance program that serves more than 360,000 Kansans.
Kansas is now set to lose more than $4 billion in Medicaid funding if the bill passes in its current form, according to updated estimates from the Hutchinson-based United Methodist Health Ministry Fund. The total losses increased by nearly $280 million after changes to the bill in the U.S. Senate.
Cuts to Medicaid are “best done with a scalpel and not with a machete,” Anderson said during a Tuesday press briefing hosted by the rural health association.
Anderson said he is interested in stewardship of federal funds, but cuts to Medicaid aren’t the right way to do it. Those cuts don’t just threaten the accessibility of the health care system for those on Medicaid but for the entire system, he said.
“Cutting Medicaid actually doesn’t save money because it sends people into the emergency department, where they get the most expensive and inefficient and inappropriate care for their ailment,” he said.
DIFFICULTY accessing quality care, inadequate insurance and existing financial distress are already playing out in the Hutchinson Regional Health Care System, Anderson said. The hospital in Hutchinson, which serves around 100,000 people in central Kansas, must prepare for federal cuts while cutting its own budget by $7.5 million, along with shouldering costs for people without insurance.
“The story of Hutchinson, Kansas, is the story of middle America,” Anderson said.
More than half of rural hospitals in Kansas are at risk of closing, and the report found that Kansas would experience a 15% reduction in total rural Medicaid hospital reimbursement under the proposed bill. Plus, 5,000 rural Kansans enrolled in Medicaid are expected to lose coverage, according to the report.
THE PROPOSED bill passed the U.S. House by a one-vote margin May 22. The U.S. Senate is expected to conduct negotiations this week.
Cindy Mann with Manatt Health, an arm of a national law and consulting firm, said during the press briefing that the cuts to public programs, including Medicaid, within the proposal are designed to reduce spending to partially offset the costs of lost revenue from tax cuts.
“In some states, the cuts are really big, and in other states, they’re bigger,” she said.
Half of all children and one in five adults in rural communities across America rely on Medicaid. Half of all births in rural communities are paid for by Medicaid, according to the report.
All the while, rural health providers are struggling to keep their doors open, Mann said.
